Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 410: Mana Recycling

CH410 Mana Recycling

***

As soon as the order dropped, the unit charged straight at Alex.

However, unbeknownst to them, Alex had not come alone.

A ripple of shadow stirred behind him—so subtle that not even the ranked officers noticed it.

Udara stepped out from Alex’s shadow, silent and unseen, taking her place as his Shadow Guard. To the lower-ranked and unranked soldiers, her existence might as well have been a hallucination.

The fortress officers, for their part, were shrewd. They let the ordinary soldiers rush ahead to encircle Alex while they themselves slipped behind the formation, waiting for the perfect opening to strike down the ’drained sorcerer’.

But Alex, naturally, would not give them time to enact their plan.

He moved first.

[Abyssal Conqueror’s Steps: Ghost Step]!

His body flickered—this time not as a burst of speed, but as a distortion through their blind spots. One moment he stood in front of them; the next, he glided past the leading soldier like a shadow slipping through cracks.

His mana-coated baton thrust cleanly into the heart of the soldier behind the first man. Without pause, Alex shifted his mana from the concentrated tip to a thin layer along the full length of the baton.

The weapon spun.

A single circular sweep decapitated two soldiers at once—including the one he had just slipped past. Their heads flew before their bodies even registered they were dead.

Something trembled behind him—an axe swing.

[Ghost Step]!

Alex vanished from the attacker’s line of sight, reappearing at their flank just outside peripheral sight.

Mana thickened across the baton.

Bam!

He smashed the soldier’s weapon apart, sending shards scattering. Alex raised the baton to crush the man’s skull—but then—

Whsssh!

An arrow screamed toward his neck.

[Ghost Step]!

Alex blurred.

He didn’t evade the soldier’s line of sight, instead, he evaded the arrow’s path, letting it pass harmlessly through his fading afterimage.

Then, without looking, he snatched the arrow out of the air.

Then, with one fluid pivot on his toes, he redirected the arrow straight into the disarmed soldier’s eye, driving it deep into his skull.

[Ghost Step]!

He vanished again, slipping out of the collapsing encirclement and into a new angle of attack.

The soldiers—especially the Bronze-ranked archer who had fired—stood frozen.

The Silver-ranked unit leader, who moments earlier had been daydreaming of the glory that would come from killing an exhausted sorcerer... felt a cold shiver crawl down his spine.

[Shadow Dash]!

A shortsword burst from the darkness, stabbing toward him.

He jolted in alarm, scrambling to intercept the strike with his longsword—barely succeeding.

But the moment steel met steel, his eyes widened.

Crack!

There wasn’t even much power behind the blow, yet his longsword fractured under Udara’s strike.

Before he could understand what had happened, Udara withdrew her blade and spun—her heel smashing into his midsection. The Silver-ranked officer flew backward, colliding into the Bronze-ranked archer standing behind him.

The last Bronze-ranked officer stared in disbelief.

How could a young woman conjure the force to send a fully armoured Silver rank flying?

That single second of hesitation sealed his fate.

Udara did not stop moving.

Backstab!

She vanished, reappearing behind the distracted Bronze rank and driving her shortsword clean through his heart.

She withdrew her blade and disappeared again—only to appear before the Silver and the last Bronze-ranked officer just as they scrambled to their feet.

A cold premonition of death seized the Silver rank. Instinct took over; he hurled himself sideways to escape the thrust he felt coming.

Udara’s strike missed him—but still plunged deep into the abdomen of the Bronze-ranked archer behind him, piercing through armour and flesh in one smooth motion.

The Silver rank had earned himself no more than a heartbeat... and then that heartbeat ran out.

Seemingly tired of playing with him, Udara ripped her blade free and pivoted sharply.

Rather than channelling her internal energy for movement, she poured it into her sword.

A crescent of blade-light flew from her strike—

—and the Silver-ranked officer’s head flew with it.

Meanwhile, Alex was already finishing his own foes.

A sudden surge of energy poured into his body from his chestplate—the Plate of Happenstance. He guided that energy into his left fist.

[Dragon Kumite: Blast]!

Boom!

A blast of condensed fist-light erupted outward, punching through three enemies in a line.

Again, energy streamed back into his body from the armour. Alex channelled it into his legs.

[Abyssal Conqueror’s Steps: Ghost Step]!

He flickered across the battlefield in several instant bursts, eliminating the remaining soldiers in a fluid sequence of blows.

Moments later, only two figures remained standing in the clearing...

Alex and Udara.

Alex lowered his gaze to his chestplate and allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.

The hidden ability of the Plate of Happenstance was indeed absurd, especially for him—

Mana Recycling.

According to Jared, the crafter of the Plate of Happenstance designed a magic armour set to help a Mage fight like a warrior.

Or something along those lines.

At first, Alex had thought it was a bold –perhaps impossible—ambition.

A defensive armour, no matter how sturdy, didn’t justify such a bold claim.

But now—after witnessing the chestplate’s hidden ability—Alex finally understood what the crafter had intended.

When a mage casts a spell, not all mana—whether drawn from the mage’s mana heart or gathered from the environment—goes into powering the spell.

A significant portion is wasted as runoff; excess heat, sound, light, shockwaves and so on.

This loss is part of what scholars describe as a mage’s casting efficiency.

No matter how skilled a mage is—at least below the Legendary Realm—some portion of wasted energy is inevitable.

The Plate of Happenstance recovers that wasted mana, converting it into either an energy shield for defence, or a physical enhancement, temporarily boosting the wearer’s physical attributes.

In theory, with enough absorbed waste mana, the Plate could elevate a mage’s physical abilities to that of a warrior of equal rank.

Part of the reason Alex had survived the temple’s collapse was precisely because of this.

The chestplate had taken the massive runoff of mana from his extremely inefficient delayed [Quadruple Fireball] spell and projected a protective barrier atop his Dragon Kumite shield—keeping him alive beneath the falling rubble.

This time, however, the chestplate had returned the collected mana directly into his body, converting it into a form akin to Internal Energy.

While this energy could not circulate back into his mana heart to cast more spells, it could fuel Dragon Kumite techniques.

And Dragon Kumite—depending on the technique—was similarly inefficient, releasing even more waste energy.

Energy that the Plate would reabsorb and cycle back into his body as power.

A continuous loop!

For Alex—who walked both the path of mage and warrior—the Plate was nothing short of a perfect bridge between the two ascension routes.

He exhaled sharply, pulling his thoughts away from the chestplate.

There was still a battle raging.

Through Senu’s shared aerial vision, Alex saw the shift immediately.

The enemy had begun concentrating their assault on Fen and Eleanor.

No doubt the fortress commanders had finally realised just how crucial the healer was to the survival of the expedition party.

***