Chapter 190
The lands of Morendia were rather similar to Fendrallia, if considerably less extreme. After all, Fendrallia bordered Morendia. However, Alice couldn’t help but notice that the lands were a little bit warmer now. Even though her body was largely immune to moderate temperature differentials after the effects of all of her Perks and [Endurance] were layered together, she still appreciated the warmer temperature. At the very least, Cecilia and Jonathan’s family would stop looking so miserable.
The second thing Alice noticed was that, thankfully, the mana in this region wasn’t overly dense. The mana in Fendrallia had been slightly denser than average – although the mana density had also spiked considerably near the swamp that had grown all sorts of new dangers and characteristics after the collapse of the System.
By contrast, Morendia actually had a marked decrease in the amount of mana inside of its borders. Unlike with climate and terrain, which had more of a gradual drop off the closer they got to the border, the difference between’ Morendia’s mana and Fendrallia’s mana was very noticeable exactly on the border between the two countries. Alice used her mana-measuring Perks, and roughly estimated that five centimeters into Morendia, the mana dropped by about 20% compared to five centimeters past the border of Fendrallia. The mana was clearly ‘ambient’ mana, and didn’t have any of the rainbow coloration associated with Perks and such… which made Alice feel curious.
It was obviously unnatural for such a massive decrease in mana to happen in the span of a few centimeters of space. There was no way that geographical features would perfectly conform to political borders, unless the humans used those features to draw the borders in the first place. But Alice knew that Fendrallia and Morendia had lost and gained some ground in wars over the past few centuries. So why was the difference in mana so obvious?
Alice suspected one of two reasons. First of all, Morendia or Fendrallia might have some sort of artifact interfering with the quantity of mana available in their surroundings. Morendia was already the known home of an Immortal specialized in enchantments, so it made perfect sense that they might have set up an artifact that consumed all of the country’s excess mana to do something. They might have also intentionally lowered the quantity of mana for whatever reason – maybe they were trying to make it harder to undergo a mana baptism, or they were trying to weaken the monsters in their borders.
Second, it could be a perception thing. If, for whatever reason, people believed that Fendrallia had more mana available in it than Morendia, the collapse of the System might have created a runaway reaction where people’s beliefs influenced reality, heightening the absurd mana quantities in Morendia, which then in turn made that reality more inherently obvious and ‘correct.’ This would lead to runaway inflation of mana quantity… or deflation, if people focused on how ‘scarce’ mana was in Morendia’s borders.
Alice wasn’t sure which was true, or if there was a third option she hadn’t thought of. Either way, the difference in mana was very noticeable. Alice was, at the very least, relieved that she probably wouldn’t have to fight her way through another magically amplified swamp of doom. The first one had been surprisingly stressful for a party with three Immortals in it, and Alice wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.
“Are there any cities we need to stop by on the way?” asked Alice, glancing around nervously. Even if there weren’t any odd monster swarms or other problems here, that might not be the case for long.
“No, the capital of Morendia is right next to the border of Fendrallia,” said Ethan, grimacing. “It used to be further away, but Morendia and Fendrallia got into a conflict about a century ago, and Morendia ended up losing a large chunk of territory.”