112 - Impossible Quest
Alexandra looked at the ceiling of her room as she lay in her bed. She couldn’t sleep. She was so bored. Without her mana, she felt very limited in the type of training she would allow herself to do.
Naturally, all her mana-dependent skills were out of the picture. She’d been checking her mana core for the past four days, but it was emptier than ever. Even when she was cursed with the sickness of mana, there technically was some mana left to maintain the curse. Now, nothing.
With her mana skills out of commission, she focused on the rest of her arsenal. At this point, there wasn’t much left that she hadn’t already capped. It was even more true since she’d need to get into a fight to level Manyfold Style, and doing so without mana would be reckless.
She’d only do it if a daily asked her to, and so far, it hadn’t been the case.
Absent-mindedly, she summoned her journal to check on her progress.
A Face Among Many 8 -> 10
Basic Herbology 1 -> 4
Basic Hygiene 3 -> 4
She’d walked the corridors of the Iron Library and the streets of Kator for days to cross paths with enough people to level A Face Among Many. She’d exhausted the range of local flora to grind Basic Herbology. As for Basic Hygiene, she admittedly didn’t focus on it. The skill kept her clean and was working in the background. There was no reason to overdo it.
That was it.
She was out of skills to level. She could always unlock Swimming or Diving. But she didn’t see a point in doing so. As for Basic Enchantment, she studied a lot, but her inability to practice made it hard to cross the finish line.
What she wanted to try was upgrading one of her skills. This wasn’t so easily done. She’d had to merge six common skills to make Manyfold Style. Now, skills could be upgraded without a merge, or with fewer skills pulled into it.
That said, there was a world of difference between could and would. Alexandra needed something that her Training Quests were depriving her of. She needed to understand her skills, and where she wanted to take them. She couldn’t cheat her way through that.
She pulled up a list of her maxed-out skills, discarding those that would require mana.
- [A Face Among Many] (Common) - 10
- [Sure Footing] (Common) - 10
- [Running] (Common) - 10
- [Reading] (Common) - 10
- [Sewing] (Common) - 10
As for Reading and Sewing, she felt even more strongly that those two skills would be better if they specialized in reading and sewing mana.
She shook her head and turned her attention to her progress.
Daily quests summary: Four Quests Completed -> +40 exp, +3 DEX, +1 PER, Skill Quest Unlocked: Light.
Daily Quest Streak: 70 -> 74
Good news: she had gotten a new skill quest. Bad news: it was for a mana-based spell.
Light – Common:
Summon an orb of light.
Each level increases your control over the orb’s brightness.
Light: Manually cast an orb of light (0/1)
This was a skill she’d definitely get around to unlocking. It was useful, if accessory.
But it didn’t save her from her boredom.
She rolled around in her bed, ending up face down with her head hanging from the side. Just a few more minutes before the quest reset. Day seventy-five marked the day she’d finally have enough experience to level up. She couldn’t wait.
Her journal changed.
Quest Journal
Daily Reset: 06:00 | Streak: 74 Days | 5% All Stats, 5% Skill experience
Next Milestone: 100 Days
Daily Quests:
- Enchant an item (0/1)
She shut her journal and opened it again. She hadn’t read it wrong. The quest was impossible.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” She stood up. Pacing around the room, she tried to think of a solution. She knew how to enchant, and she needed mana to do so. How was she supposed to reach out to the ambient mana otherwise?
She stared at the text again, her mouth dry. Seventy-four days of effort, of pushing through sicknesses and exhaustion, destroyed by a requirement she could not fulfill.
She sank back onto the edge of the mattress. The wood groaned under her weight.
Her fingers brushed the leather binding of her journal, but she didn't open it again. There was no point. Without a single drop of mana in her core, she could not send a thread to negotiate with the ambient mana. She could not enchant anything.
The silence of the room closed in around her. She lay back down and stared blankly at the dark corners of the ceiling.
A thought gnawed at the back of her mind. Daily quests should be possible. It didn’t make sense for the system to give her a quest she couldn’t possibly complete. In a game, maybe. But not in this reality.
She stood back up.
“Yes, there has to be a way.”
The method of enchantment she knew wouldn’t work? Well, maybe there was another that she could use. Alexandra couldn’t claim to be an expert in the subject after taking a mere introduction class.
Her thoughts moved to lifeforce and solar energy. The former felt like a dead end. Ambient lifeforce wasn’t a thing. Inanimate objects didn’t have lifeforce. There was no negotiating with something that didn’t exist.
Ambient solar energy, on the other hand… Maybe? She wasn’t sure if it existed, could lead to an enchantment, or that she’d even be capable of making it work.
Still, she had to try.
She rushed out of her room and beelined for Willow’s. The corridors of the dormitory were dead. Alexandra walked fast, her steps quiet but hurried as she navigated the familiar turns toward Willow’s room.
She didn’t knock. She shoved the heavy wooden door open.
Willow was awake, sitting at her wooden desk, a small notebook open before her. She was tracing a neat line across the paper.
"It’s six in the morning, Alex," Willow said.
“I need your help for my daily,” Alexandra said, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind her. "Enchantment."
Willow put her pen down and raised her head, her eyes narrowing as she took in Alexandra’s words.
“That’s a problem. I take it that your mana hasn’t returned?”
Alexandra shook her head.
Willow closed her notebook. “To the library.”
“I want to get Kam, too,” Alexandra said. “On the off chance lifeforce can be used as a conduit.”
Willow nodded.
The two of them made their way to Kam’s room and found the boy asleep. Alexandra walked over to the mattress and gripped his shoulder, shaking him firmly. "Kam. Wake up."
He groaned, rolling onto his back and squinting up at her through the dim morning light. He looked past her toward Willow, who stood in the doorway with her arms crossed.
"What is it?" Kam mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
"I have an enchantment quest."
“Okay.” Kam closed his eyes again.
Alexandra shook him. “I need your help. Wake up.”
“I don’t know enchantment,” Kam said. “Let me sleep.”
"I don’t have mana," Alexandra said. "That's why you're coming with us. We're going to the library to see if there's a workaround using alternative energy."
Kam groaned, but eventually got himself out of bed.
“Lifeforce isn’t going to cut it.”
“I figured as much,” Alexandra said, pulling Kam by the arm as she walked toward the library. “But we need to look into it.”
She summoned her journal and handed it to Kam. It was open on the Adventuring Party page. “Put your hand on it.”
Kam, half-asleep, did as he was asked, and his name was added to her party. It wouldn’t do much, but considering that she was planning to escape with him, she figured having him in the party wouldn’t hurt.
As they walked, she wondered what would happen if she managed to get a Gold rank student in her party, one that was about to rank up and graduate. Perhaps this would help her complete the event quest without having to stay in the academy. She decided to keep the idea in mind. If the chance arose, she’d grab it. But she wasn’t going to delay her escape for it. The quest would be forfeited then, so it seemed unlikely that she’d find a willing target in the small interval she had.
She also didn’t feel like gifting an epic skill to just anyone, though that could be negotiated.
The trio reached the library, and Willow and Kam got to the kiosks to sift through the catalogue of books on the first floor. Alexandra watched them, as she couldn’t connect to the device without her mana.
While the collection of books on alternative energies was sparse, and something Alexandra had already explored, there was a lot of material on enchantment.
It was, after all, the most popular method to interact with ambient mana, and valuable knowledge for all mages, even those who didn’t specialize in the subject.
Ambient mana was everywhere. It would have a minute, but very much present, effect on any spell. Knowing how to work with it was necessary for more complex forms of magic.
“I can’t find anything,” Kam said. “There’s no intersection between lifeforce and enchantment.”
Alexandra turned to Willow. “What about you?”
“There’s one book, but I don’t know how useful it will be,” she said. “It’s a book on formations discussing manaless environmental effects on the end-product.”
Alexandra nodded. Formations were somewhat similar to enchantments, but on a much wider scale. Where an enchantment would affect one object, a formation would encompass an entire area. As a result, formations were more susceptible to environmental changes because they depended on many more factors.
“It’s a start,” Alexandra said. “Let’s get it, and move to the Bronze floor.”
Book in hand, they climbed the stairs to the second floor. There, they found another book that might be able to help. Once again, it was only tangentially related to what Alexandra was trying to accomplish, as the book touched on alchemy. More specifically, the influence of lifeforce when used in potion making.
Alexandra didn’t expect much from the book.
“What do we do?” Alexandra asked. “That’s not going to be enough.”
“I can check out the Silver floor,” Willow whispered. “You two start working here.”
It was with few ideas, and a lot of faith, that Alexandra and Kam sat at a table near the window overlooking the sea and started flipping through the pages of the books they’d borrowed.
If there were nothing here, she’d have to ask Alfred. Or worse.