Chapter 12: Offer and Refusal
Ember was ecstatic. Although he had read stories and even heard many gospels of what people of higher ranks and levels could achieve with mana, he had little personal experience with it while confined within the bounds of his home. But who could have imagined a single cast of his could cleave through a gnarled tree four times the breadth of his waist?
Of course, it exhausted half of his mana, but he was but a child, and his mana was still growing. Simply imagining the terrific and miraculous deeds he could perform with mana filled him with exuberance.
There was also another good thing that came out of this whole spell-flinging accident.
[Running (Common) +9 → Max.]He was uncertain how this came to be, considering the last advancement in Running came only a couple of weeks ago. It had come right after his sudden lurch of movement when the tree fell towards him. In panic, Ember had somehow managed to pour all his mana into his lower body to fling himself out of the way.
Regrettably, he had no skill slots available to evolve it to a copper skill. He was still about 200 evolution points away from reaching Tier 3. If only he had a copper skill at early stages. It would have been a breeze if that were the case.
As the kids were already preparing to leave, Ember returned the wand to its rightful owner with a small amount of reluctance. While the power it could generate was quite startling, Ember was more interested in picking apart the mysteries etched within to figure out how something like this had been made. As far as he was aware, any elemental skill, even the minor ones, began at least at iron rank.
Yet somehow, an object only larger than a pen could accommodate an attuned skill, something that takes 9 skill slots or more. He wondered if his father would buy him one, though he did not ask. A Tier-3 wand was likely too expensive for him to play around with. Even his sister didn’t have one, which only reinforced his assumption.
Speaking of her, Rain was still tackling the thought that their father would not be looking after her during the hunt. He had mentioned it was something to do with his aura scaring away lower-level monsters, and the system not counting it towards her feat if she was too dependent on him.