As I roll out of bed the next day, I can't help but feel like today is going to be unique. Stepping out of my room, I immediately feel like I have forgotten something already. It wasn't until I had gone downstairs and was about to head to my morning practice that I remembered. Today is the day that if Bryst hasn't completed her profession quest, then she will come and seek help from me.

  Happily walking along, I arrive at the training grounds and proceed with my usual morning sessions. I have been slowly improving at sparring over the last week and a half, particularly during my sessions with Haroth. While it hasn't significantly improved my abilities, I have seen a steady improvement in the fact that we no longer lose our blades every time they clash. We continue to spar for the time I am there, and it isn't long until I am ready to move on to the next part of my training with the bow.

  When I arrive at the archery range, it doesn't take long before I am relegated to a range that seems short. Looking at the shots some of the other archers are making from a range of around 20 to 30 meters, I can't help but sigh at the lack of range I can hit somewhat accurately. 10 meters. That is how far my target is from me. Even then, I cannot guarantee a hit, as this isn't something I can entirely focus on after another hour of shooting. For the most part, hitting the target, though, with no sense of precision or accuracy beyond simply hitting the target, I move on to the next item in my day. Which I am thankful for. It's time to head to the mage tower and work on my mana.

  Once I arrive at the mage tower, I can tell it's going to be a good time, as there are several different mages already there. The moment I walk in, they hustle to get to the room that Laxreal and I have been working out of. Once I enter the room, I can see there are several different mages as well as some hunters and warriors. Seeing the different lineup of people in the room, I take a seat.

  "Alright, with everyone who has shown interest now present, shall we begin?" Laxreal is at the front of the room, leading the discussion. "As this is the first time we are discussing this topic with such a diverse group of people, I would like those from different worlds to describe how they accumulate mana and how they progressed in power on their home worlds."

  Standing near the front of the room, Gibnic stands up and heads towards Laxreal. "Hello, everyone. I am sure some of you are already familiar with who I am, but for those who aren't, my name is Gibnic Mikmack. I am from the planet known as Usa'Nov. While this isn't the name my people have given it, it is the name most of the sentient races have given it. That is beside the point, as we are all here to discuss mana and how we can improve, just as we did back home. From my experiences in the world, we would slowly pull mana into our bodies and then cycle it around; now, we typically don't store mana in a pool, as PUN suggests. What we would do is form a connection to the mana and help it to amplify different parts of our bodies. This could be done in different ways; I know some people would use it in a brash manner, purely to increase their physical might, while other races, like my own, would increase the mana flow to our brains so we could work on complicated problems and control the mana."

  Gibnic continued to discuss the further intricacies of this kind of mana cycling. Although not entirely different from what I am accustomed to hearing, I can also understand that it was a temporary situation. They never held the mana in themselves for longer than they could withstand it. The longer they could, the better, and the faster they could incorporate the mana, the more they were able to showcase their power.

  Once he was done discussing their form, to my shock, one of the warriors stood up and introduced herself. "Hello, I am Belroco Shrezath, a Dark Elf from Troberia. I am one of the few from my race who still live to this day, and I would be more than happy to share my perspective on how mana was used in our world."

  It takes me a minute to take my eyes off of her since she is one of the prettier people I have seen since coming here. During that time, I was zoning out; I was later informed of what she had said to me.

  "In my world, mana is used to focus on improving our souls rather than increasing our physical bodies. With the corrupted beings all around us, we found that those with a strong soul can resist their corruption for a time. So, while increasing the amount of mana our souls could hold, we were able to slowly create small, safe havens for those of other races. Our strongest were holding off the higher-evolved, corrupted beings, while those of lower strength were forced to hide indoors."

  Seeing that she had finished introducing the type of mana empowerment her world had undergone, she nodded her head lightly and then proceeded to sit back down. Finally, Laxreal steps back up and introduces himself to the gathering. Once that is done, he explains more about how his world cycled mana. "Those from Thelatera cycle mana into a mana core; this core is then slowly filled and pushed past a point, forcing it to either condense all the mana inside or expand its bounds. For those who were expanding the capacity of their core, this, in my world, is referred to as a small bottleneck. We had different levels of power, primarily based on the nobility system, but there were also levels within that system. A Fourth Tier Baron would be someone who had expanded their core four times at the Baron level. Reaching the ninth tier would then allow someone to attempt to condense that mana to advance to the next Rank."

  Finally, once everyone else had finished speaking, it was my turn to step forward and introduce myself. "Hello, I'm Drake Taldrit, and I'm from Culhara. From what I know, my world didn't have any mana but was instead a world based on bloodlines. Most of this was unknown to me until a little over a week ago, as I was what was called an 'unawakened' individual. Some people in my world used this as an insult to those who had awakened, describing the vast majority of the population that hadn't. And there was even a risk, I learned, that upon awakening your bloodline, you could potentially go crazy and either have to be put down or be left in the wilds of the world not to be heard from."

  After saying my piece, I proceed to head back to my seat and take a seat. People are giving me some weird looks, but from what I can tell, there's nothing I can do about it since that's all in the past, and we have to focus on the future.

  Since that involves someone from each of the worlds, we should begin our discussion with some additional information. Drake, can you come up here again?"

  Everyone once again looks at me, and as I head up, Laxreal continues. "We have found a slight problem with magic once someone reaches their first evolution in their class. This problem may affect everyone in this room, as well as those outside. Once someone evolves their class, if they already have a mana affinity, they may now be able to cast their spells as intended. To the best of my knowledge, Drake is the only one experiencing this problem currently. Has anyone else heard anything different in this regard?" He asks the gathered people, to which there is a smattering of 'No's' and shaking of heads.

  "Good, then let's proceed with a brief demonstration of what happens when someone with an evolved class is unable to cast their spells. Drake, could you please cast a shield spell on me?" He asks me directly.

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  Nodding, I knew what was going to happen, but I still went ahead and cast the spell. From what I can sense, there is a gathering of mana, and the spell is cast as it should be, but it feels like something is missing. As a result, when it is cast, the spell fizzles out around Laxreal in a visible series of white sparks.

  "Alright, next, can you cast one of your other affinity spells at me?" He once again asks of me.

  This time, I nod, but I don't understand what he is getting at. So I cast Barkskin on him. Just as before the spell is cast, the same feeling of something missing remains in my head, and then the spell fizzles out in a shower of white sparks. I give Laxreal a look of confusion before he continues.

  "I would like everyone to note that the series of sparks was the same color as before with the life spell, even though it was a nature spell." There is a nodding of heads. "Continuing wouldn't make much sense, as these two things are what we can assume everyone would see. But there is a small secret that I haven't said. I am also level 10 and have an affinity. Do you know what color sparks my spells showcase when they fail to manifest fully? He asks the crowd.

  "What is your mana affinity? We might be able to make a decent enough guess," Gibnic calls out to him.

  "A fair statement; my affinity lies with Death."

  "That is simple: something black with an aura of decay or a grey color." Someone else answers the original question.

  Casting a spell of his own, I can only become more confused, not because a spell is not being cast, but because he claims to be level 10.

  "So, what is the purpose of having Drake cast two different spells and you casting only one?" Belroco asks.

  "That is a bit easier to answer, but I will have to answer it with a question in return. Shouldn't Drake's second spell be a different color, or at least a green one, from his first spell?"

  This has the group stumped for a minute before someone else speaks up, "Couldn't that be because he only has one affinity?"

  While not everyone knows this, you can't learn spells that you don't have even a slight affinity for. So, in this case, that would be a no. That shouldn't be the case."

  "Then is it because it is his main affinity?"

  "That is the question I was hoping someone would ask so we can all be on the same page. Honestly, I'm not sure if I have the answer to that question. However, I can say that this is something that deserves consideration as we progress in determining how to allow those with an affinity at level 10 to utilize it with their spells."

  "I have a question, Laxreal. Why is it that we can cast spells up to level 10 when we have an affinity, but once we obtain our first evolution, we are no longer able to do so?" I asked him.

  "I think it might have something to do with why we have to do more with a Tier 1 building than we did with a Tier 0 building. PUN is slowly taking the kid gloves off so we can get used to this new world. Now, I don't know how long this period will last, but it would be better for us to try to figure something out sooner rather than later."

  Nodding along with that description, we all start to put our heads together to figure out the problem. There were several times people had to get up to use the chalkboard behind Laxreal and me to help illustrate what they were trying to explain. It isn't until someone asks what it looks like with an affinity in the evolved class that we have to stop for a second.

  I then explain how my four affinities are split into four different quadrants. There is one for Life, Nature, Corruption, and Death. Each can transition into the other quadrants, but they will gradually be converted to that kind of mana. Currently, there is only a single mote of each type of mana in each quadrant.

  "Have you tried incorporating your affinity into the mana you are about to use to cast a spell?" Belroco asks.

  "As of this moment, no, but that is something I would like to test; however, we don't know how dangerous it will be to do so," I responded.

  "I think that's something worth trying; now we just have to figure out how to incorporate the mana to achieve the desired affinity," Gibnic exclaims.

  Slowly, we start to try a couple of different things. In one instance, they have me try to circulate the motes inside of the quadrants as a complete circle. Once the mote reaches the edge of its quadrant, it no longer wants to move forward. Then they try to have me push mana into my mana heart. While this does seem to work, it also begins to cause harm as an increasing amount of affinity-less mana accumulates inside, making it murky and bloated. I have to slowly pull out the mana by casting spells.

  At one point, I started to cast a spell, and it felt a bit more like it should, and there were far fewer sparks involved in the casting.

  "What was that?" Someone else asked, noticing a lower number of sparks.

  "I was trying to rid myself of the excess mana in my mana heart because I was starting to feel bloated in an unpleasant way," I answered.

  "But there were fewer sparks than before. Do you know what could have caused it?"

  This set of questions has gotten everyone's attention. It doesn't take long to figure out what happened. "So, you're saying that a bit of mana was touching the motes inside your mana heart, making it feel better to cast the spells?" Laxreal starts to question me.

  "I think so, yes," I answered to the best of my ability.

  Tapping his finger to his jaw, he starts to hypothesize. "What happens if you were to try to thread the mana through the mote inside your mana heart?"

  "I'll try." Taking it slowly, with his hand on my back to observe the process, I slowly start to pull mana through my body. When it reaches my mana heart, it initially comes in like a flood, causing me to have to discharge the bloating I was feeling once again. It takes a little over an hour before I am finally able to grasp how to slowly push mana into my heart without it flooding in. By the time I can do that, I am also able to create a string of mana that feels through the mote of life mana. Once the mana has passed through, it remains in my heart, retaining its affinity. I continue to charge my mana with my affinity until I can feel the same bloating. Once that happened, I stopped feeding mana into my heart.

  When I look closer at what is happening inside my heart while feeling bloated with Life affinity mana, I find that it is staying closer to the mote of life and not getting close to any of the other motes. Reporting this to the room, I can see that they are pleased with this discovery and hope to achieve an affinity before reaching the higher tiers of their class evolution.

  Standing up, I focus on using the mana in my heart, and as it runs down my hand into the spell that I am focusing on, I can feel the mana click into place. With a breath, I release the spell, and a shield appears around Laxreal. There is a round of clapping as everyone is happy that we have found a solution to this immediate problem. When I looked inside, I could see that I had used a little more than 3% of the mana I had converted. Thinking about how many spells I can now cast without running out of this affinity-specific mana, I can only sigh. While I might have four times as much mana as anyone else, I can currently only use about a quarter of it when I set it as an affinity.

  Thinking that this was a good start, I decided to take my leave. "Thank you, everyone. Suppose you would like to continue discussing this topic. In that case, I am sure Laxreal would be a wonderful help, as he also has his own mana affinity and would probably be better suited for the following discussions. I need to get going so we can finish the Adventurer's Guild sometime today or early tomorrow."

  Seeing everyone nod in agreement, I was finally able to leave the building after two hours of discussion and testing. On my way to work on the building, I can't help but think about whether Bryst has been able to complete her task of raising her profession to the next tier. Hopefully, I will run into her on my way, and I can ask her about it.