Chapter 103

Chapter 22

“How many did you pick?”

“Forty in total.”

“……That’s more than I expected.”

“Honestly, I thought about just picking around ten. But what if too few of the people I pick turn out to have good talent? Better to pick a lot this way and weed people out along the way.”

“Huh.”

At that, Sia nodded.

“That does make sense. Talent is heavily random, after all.”

“Right. Sia, can you handle the contact? You can do it while the broadcast is on.”

“Yes, I’ll do that.”

Having said that, Jaeha headed down to the sparring ground. Once there, he moved to a corner where none of his party members were. Then, standing still and thinking for a moment, he began constructing the magic circles as Gersia had taught him.

After about five minutes of drawing, Jaeha completed all five magic circles.

“Activate.”

Jaeha quietly watched the magic circles. The moment they activated, the mana around them slowly began gathering toward the circles.

Watching silently, Jaeha fell into thought as he observed the amount of mana.

‘The amount of mana gathering seems a bit low.’

Jaeha, quietly gauging the mana flowing into the magic circles, thought that and shook his head.

‘Should I stack additional magic circles on top of this?’

At that, Jaeha examined the circles one by one, then shook his head.

‘If I add more, the difficulty would spike way too much.’

Adding another mana-gathering circle would take time to form, and maintaining it would be a hassle and drain too much energy.

‘Maybe I should drop the flow circle and triple-stack the concentration circle instead.’

Turning over method after method, Jaeha shook his head.

“If I’m going to do that, I might as well start from scratch.”

Leaving the circles he’d already made, Jaeha created a new set off to the side. After agonizing over the magic circles several times, he shook his head.

‘I need to find a different approach. Maybe I should look into formations.’

With that decided, Jaeha quietly used the Heavenly Codex to search through formations.

‘There are formations that block energy. But there’s nothing suitable for gathering or drawing it in.’

He thought about it, nodded, and spoke.

‘I need to change my approach?’

Getting up from his spot, Jaeha left the sparring ground.

* * *

“Hey.”

“Do you not know that knocking before entering someone’s room is basic etiquette?”

“This is my house, though?”

“……How underhanded, presenting facts.”

“I came because I have a question.”

“What is it?”

“When you Awakened Seungho, how long did you leave the magic circle set up?”

“I’m not sure why you ask, but it was just under thirty minutes, I believe.”

“I tried making a magic circle in the sparring ground. The mana didn’t gather all that well.”

“…Isn’t that only natural? The amount of mana existing within the same space is always equal. There’s no way hundreds of ethers would gather in an instant.”

“…….”

At that, Jaeha was quiet for a moment before asking.

“How did you gather the mana, then?”

“I simply used the mana I possess.”

“……Ah, right.”

The amount of energy a dragon inherently possessed was beyond imagination. And dragons constantly drew in the mana around them.

It was said they stored it within their dragon hearts, which had enormous capacity.

“Would it be okay if I killed some dragons from your world?”

“Well, if you wish to, go ahead.”

“Really? Wouldn’t the Dragon Lord step in or something?”

“Dragons generally do not care to concern themselves with others. Though there are occasionally peculiar ones who do.”

“Tempting.”

Saying that, Jaeha let out a sigh.

“How many ethers did it take to awaken Seungho?”

“Hmm……. All combined, it came to roughly 300 ethers.”

“300 ethers is a bit over five gapja. I’ve got about five gapja myself. So I’d be short, and then some.”

“It would be more than merely short.”

“From what I know, when Seungho awakened, didn’t he absorb most of the mana around him?”

“That’s right. When one awakens, the body fundamentally evolves. That amount of mana is roughly five gapja. Humans have already calculated it in advance.”

“I called about 40 people, so that’s 200 gapja total?”

“You’ll have your work cut out for you.”

“Hey. How much mana does the dragon heart of an adult dragon hold?”

“I’m not certain of the exact figure, but if I calculate by average, I believe it’s around 600,000 ethers.”

“In gapja terms, that’s 10,000 gapja. Well, I suppose you lot do live for tens of thousands of years.”

“Are you planning to go hunt one?”

“Do you have any spare dragon hearts lying around?”

“I used to, but I already consumed them all in the process of my experiments.”

“Haah.”

Jaeha let out a sigh, rose from his seat, nodded, and asked.

“Spreading mana out like that reduces the absolute amount, right?”

“That would be the case for humans.”

“Haah. This is a headache. I need to increase it by at least 200 gapja. Maybe I shouldn’t have said I’d do this.”

“The die is already cast, is it not?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Jaeha let out another sigh, got up from his seat, and left Gersia’s room. Coming down to the living room, he spoke to Sia, who was preparing something.

“Post the notice.”

“What should it say?”

“That we’re pushing back the scheduled date by a few days.”

“Did something come up?”

“Yeah.”

“Understood. How many days should I say?”

“A week, to be safe.”

“The rankings reset in 10 days, right? I’ll just push it back a clean 10 days. It’s more convenient to start after the rankings change, isn’t it?”

“Do that.”

“Yes.”

With that, Jaeha went straight up to his room. Then he began to mull things over.

‘What methods do I have to increase my mana significantly?’

Before long, Jaeha came up with a way to increase his mana.

‘First off, the easiest method from where I stand would be martial arts cultivation techniques.’

With a good cultivation technique, even just one or two would net him a bit over five gapja. But that wasn’t easy either—a simple calculation showed he’d need around 80 cultivation techniques.

And that was 80 techniques of Ancient rank at that. Of course, it wasn’t impossible to find them, but the time spent acquiring 80 and mastering them perfectly felt like a waste. Especially since they were consumable in nature.

‘More than anything, with the 10-day time limit, cultivation techniques are out. The second option is at best brewing Elixirs or mana-boosting potions and consuming them.’

Aside from that, no other method came to mind. Just then, Gersia knocked on Jaeha’s door.

“What is it? Got something to say?”

“You said you were looking for a way to increase your mana, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve formulated a hypothesis.”

“You really do love coming up with hypotheses.”

“Naturally. You possess what is commonly called martial arts, and through it, you hold a fairly substantial amount of mana for a human.”

“So?”

“However, I understand that you also practice something called demonic arts. Am I correct?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s right.”

“And I understand that demonic arts are not significantly different from other cultivation techniques.”

“Right.”

“If that’s the case, I believe the energy that the System manifests is ultimately mana and nothing else.”

“You really think it’s only that one thing?”

“From what I can see, it appears to be a single type. The yin mana used by dark mages doesn’t seem to be properly implemented either. The reason I think this is because of the Corpse Puppets you created.”

“The Corpse Puppets?”

“Yes. Back when I had no proper information about the Corpse Puppets, even though I couldn’t sense the aura of the dead from them, I let it slide. I didn’t know much about the System back then either. But now that I think about it carefully, they could be described as undead that are both undead and not—an ambiguous state of undead.”

“Hmm.”

“To put it simply, it’s true that they died, but unlike the undead I know of, they are undead created using positive mana rather than yin mana.”

“So, to summarize what you’re saying—yin mana isn’t implemented in the System. That’s why undead or Corpse Puppets, which should be made of yin mana, can’t be composed of it, and as a result, they don’t carry the sinister energy that’s one of yin mana’s characteristics. Right?”

“Correct.”

“That could be. I do possess Divine Power through Michael’s Blessing and the newly acquired Metatron’s Blessing, but it’s more accurate to say it’s mana with healing properties.”

“Even so, what’s peculiar about the System is that it guarantees the unique characteristics of each type of energy.”

“Unique characteristics.”

“Yin mana is fundamentally saturated with malice and heavily aggressive. Holy power is said to be the most powerful of all energies—it grants healing to living beings while dealing overwhelming damage to the undead. That’s what I’m talking about. Humans with the healer trait commonly possess mana with healing effects, correct?”

“I get the gist of what you’re saying.”

“And now, you need a large amount of mana?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not sure, but all of those energies exist in our world. And among the many energies, there’s only one that can be acquired in large quantities within a short period of time.”

“Which one?”

“Holy power.”

“Holy power?”

“Yes. Holy power is energy bestowed by a god. And even if you possess a great deal of it, there’s no danger whatsoever. Perhaps that’s why gods grant enormous amounts of energy to their saints or popes.”

“Oh-ho.”

“I don’t know the exact details, but it’s said that when one becomes a saint, the energy they receive is comparable to that of an Archangel.”

“Archangel?”

“Archangel is a term denoting a rank among the celestials—the fourth from the top, below the highest rank of Seraph. And fundamentally, holy power has about five times the efficiency of mana. The absolute amount of holy power an Archangel possesses is roughly 3,000.”

“Five times the efficiency in mana terms. So that’s 15,000 ether?”

“Converted to gapja, that’s 250 gapja. Isn’t that a sufficient amount for your use?”

“I suppose so. But even so, finding that through videos won’t be easy. Actual holy power, I mean. And especially when we’re not even certain holy power exists in the first place, per your hypothesis—I don’t think finding it would be easy at all. Besides, in our world, we have a pope, but he’s a pope in name only.”

“As far as I know, there are records in your world of a saint having existed in the past.”

“Yeah, there is such a Legendary. But that’s literally a ‘Legendary.’ Legendaries are things passed down by word of mouth with no one knowing when, where, or who wrote them—that’s what we call Legendaries.”

“I understand your world has quite a few such legends. And you’ve proven that one of them was real. In my view, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.”

“Hmm. You haven’t thought of a method yet, have you?”

“Couldn’t you use the source of your power?”

“That goes without saying.”

“But one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“What about using that?”

“That?”

“The fox bead, was it.”

“……Ah.”

At Gersia’s words, Jaeha smiled and nodded.

“That’s a great hint.”

“Then I’ll take my leave. Let me know once things are sorted out. I’d like to confirm whether my hypothesis is correct.”

“Sure.”

And with that, Gersia left the room, and Jaeha rummaged through his Inventory. Then he pulled out the fox bead he had stashed away.

In truth, when Jaeha had first received the fox bead from the summoned beasts, he had intended to acquire some unusual kind of trait with it.

But at some point, MuTube updated, and as he became preoccupied with rankings, no opportunity to gain a new skill presented itself. However, since it happened to become usable efficiently now, Jaeha was satisfied.

‘The summoned beast said that after eating this, I’d gain a talent for things I see for the first time. So I should look into popes and saints and things like that.’

With that conclusion reached, Jaeha picked up his cell phone and began searching for saints, popes, and related matters.