After learning the skills, Roy decided to test them out on the training ground. After some time, he mostly learned to use them, and implement them in his fighting stile. Later he decided to leave GW for the day, so he went to the gateway portal, and headed back home.When he exited the portal, he saw that it was the 5th of July. One day after his birthday, so he"s been in GW for about a day.
He then sold some GW Coins. You could use skills, even in the human world, so of course you could also see your person, and take out some Coins. He sold 5 GC on the net for 55k Credits, so he got a good deal. Usually, Credits and Copper Coins would sell somewhere around a 1 : 1 ration. He sold them for a 1 : 1.1 ratio, and made an extra 5k Credits.
He then bought a Status Tool - 3S for 47.3k Credits. The 3S refereed to the SSS quest rank in GW, so you could judge how good it was. Reviews come from only customers, and cannot be forged/hacked to make a review better, or worse. It was maintained by the "real reviews" part of the Net AI.
The Status Tool was a device, that could check your base stats, gifts, and curse, mana density in your body, type of mana in your body, etc. Roy bought it to see his mana type, and to then know how he should nurture it.
It looked something like a coffee machine, but you would just put a bodily fluid inside a vial, and insert it into the device. It would take about a minute to finish measuring, but if there was some obstruction or flaw, it would take longer. But of course, different fluids would give more or less precise results. The worst one to use would be urine. It has too much impurities in it. Next would be spit. It was normal, and not disgusting. Then there would be blood. There would be a precise result, and almost no flaws in it. Afterwards, there would be liquid mana. You could produce it with a technique or a skill. It would be pure mana, so the results about mana would be almost perfect.
The last fluid would be Life Essence. The result would be the best. But people wouldn"t waste it for a simple test. A drop of Life Essence would be equivalent to 50 years of life. To sacrifice 50 years for a simple test would be something only a madman would do. People would only consider it, if the testing device was of +SSX rank, and even then it would be a waste.
If someone would sell a single drop of Life Essence, it could be used for almost anything. You could restore someones lost limb, cure them of all impurities, put them in top condition and even somewhat reverse aging. It was an all in one deal. People have also used it to make live AI.
There was just one problem. You normally couldn"t find it on the market. The UHA banned the selling of it, because it would basically kill people, and people would kill over it. But, you could still find it on the black market from "organic farms". These "farms" would be a human torturing farm, that would put people on the verge of death, until they would give up their Life Essence. But because normal people usually don"t live longer than a 100 years naturally, they can only get less than 2 drops from them. They could use people who went, or are, from GW. But they are protected by the UHA, if they achieved something, so there would be bigger trouble from them.
GW people would normally produce 1 drop of Life Essence per 25 levels, every 100 levels they would produce 2 drops instead of 1. And if you could level up to level 500, you would get 15 drops. By that time, you would have 38 Life Essence drops, which could make anyone drool over them.
...
Roy put in a fresh drop of blood, and waited. He was anxious to see the results, and couldn"t wait to see them. This would affect his future, so it was of the utmost importance. After the results came, he would need to find a technique to nurture, condense, and strengthen his mana.
30 seconds...
55 seconds...
60 seconds...
65 seconds...?
...
After about 2 minutes, Roy thought that something must be wrong. It was supposed to take a minute, and already 2 had pa.s.sed. He decided to wait a little longer.
3 minutes...
4 minutes...
5 minutes...
Roy finally gave up. He got up to stop the device, and just then, it started beeping. The results were finally in. Roy was ecstatic, and checked them.
[Status Tool - 3S
This person has used blood while taking this...]
...
[Mana Type (primary):
Normal Mana - 30.1% - (average is 73%)
Monster - 48% - (average is 19%)
Abyss - 17.6% - (average is 5%)
Emperor - 2.8% - (average is 2%)
Dragon - 1.5% - (average is 1%)
Mana Type (secondary):
Normal Mana - 12.9% - (average is 20%)
Fire - 12.2% - (average is 12%)
Water - 16.3% - (average is 18%)
Air - 17.3% - (average is 19%)
Earth - 14.9% - (average is 16%)
Spirit - 8.6% - (average is 5%)
Crystal - 5% - (average is 3%)
Light - 5.2% - (average is 4%)
Dark - 4.8% - (average is 2%)
Magnet - 2.8% - (average is 1%)
Accuracy is 84.2% - 87.8%.]
"Cool, the rarer elements are more abundant, than usual. I can basically choose any element to practice." Roy said. If he could stabilize and use more than one kind of mana, then he would have a huge advantage over other people.
Mana worked like this. While you go about your everyday life, you get certain types of mana. If you live somewhere near the ocean, you would have more water type mana. If you lived on a scorching planet, that"s very close to the sun, you would have more fire and sun type mana.
Each secondary element has 5 stages. The 1st stage would be each of the elements from the Status Tool list above. When you were level 10, your mana "reserves" would unlock, and you could use mana, that"s stage 1. Stage 2 of something like fire, is lighting. 3 is lava, and 4 is sun mana. There are variants, like magma, that have a little different uses, but that"s manly it.
You could choose to start absorbing, and practicing, just one type, and all of it"s stages. That way, you could use that type"s spells, and they would be that much more powerful. So, if you would fill your mana reserves with only one type of mana (100%), then it would be many times more powerful than just a fraction (like 10%). You could also have 2 type"s of mana stored. Then you would be able to use 2 types of spells. But they wouldn"t be as powerful, and you wouldn"t have as much mana in your reserves to use. Both could occupy 50%, and would have balanced power, or one could take up more s.p.a.ce, and have greater power.
Also, there"re ways to upgrade/expand your reserves. There were certain people, who would use more than 2 different types of mana. Therefore, they could also use more spells, but again, the power of those spells wouldn"t be as great.
Primary type mana, would work like this. Normal is just normal. Monster is stronger than normal, abyss stronger than monster, emperor stronger than abyss, and dragon is stronger than emperor. If you could have 100% dragon mana in the primary reserves, your spells would be stronger than the same spell, but with different primary mana.
"I ques I"ll use all 10 types of (secondary) mana." Roy wanted to be able to use all types of mana (everything 10%). That way, he could always counter someone else"s spell, with a stronger one. He also wanted to have 92% Dragon, and all other primary manas 2%. And that was because, for certain situations, you would need a specific mana type. For example, that you would prove that you aren"t a monster, you would use normal mana. To prove you aren"t a dragon, you could also use normal or emperor, and so on. That was because monsters would never have normal mana, and dragons as well. Abyssal creatures would usually have just abyss type mana, etc.
"Now I just need to find a suitable technique to store mana in these proportions." Roy searched on the net for awhile and found one. "This seems good. It"s balanced, and isn"t costly. It also tells the ways to use and absorb all mana types, so I won"t have to get another technique." He bought it for 6.5k Credits, and got it almost instantly."Oof, heavy. It"s a little thick. That"s at least a 1000 pages." Roy thought.
"Kay" let"s get started!" Roy opened the book. And indeed, it was more than 1200 pages. "But that"s good." Roy thought. "It"ll have a better explanation, and cover more subjects.". He started reading it.
Since he increased his INT and WIS, he could better understand this kind of things, and remember them without any trouble. He read it for 6 hours, and finished. For normal people, that would be very fast, but for someone with "high" stats, that was rather slow. He read slowly because he wanted to understand better, and he also pondered for awhile on these otherworldly things.
This wasn"t the last time he was gonna read it. He read it once so he could get a better understanding of what"s ahead. Now, he was gonna read each page of each chapter slowly. And try to understand the deeper meaning of it.
He finished "understanding" the first six chapters on the next day. The first chapter was about mana in general. It talked about its author"s theories on how mana got in this world, why it exists, what it really is, etc. The next five chapters were guides on absorbing the stage 1 secondary types mana, where to find them, how they react to each other, where they could be useful, and so on and so forth.