“You are overreacting,” Veraxia commented casually from the sidelines as I paced back and forth. She casually gnawed on a piece of drone meat, but I could not muster the same composure. With the mandibles gone, my combat prowess shrunk significantly. While Veraxia was there to deal with soldiers for now, I would not be able to do anything if ever faced with one on my own again.
Veraxia’s attitude and her loud chewing were not helpful in the situation. “I am not,” I grumbled back at her.
“You are. And I do not understand the reason,” she said, raising her head and swallowing the meat in her mouth. There was some truth to her words. There was no real reason to actually fuss over it since I could easily retrieve them when we returned to the outer core, but without them, I felt strangely powerless.
“I am weak without them.” The words just came out, and despite them being the hard truth, something within me repulsed at the admission. Never before had I illusion that denied reality. I was weak, that sole fact was the reason for all the suffering I went through, and yet, it felt like my very soul was rejecting this objective fact.
Amid my confusion, it was Veraxia who pulled me out of my train of thought. “You are weak, even with them. If you keep relying on weapons and equipment, you will never become strong. You will delude yourself into thinking that you are, but in reality, you will grow dependent. True strength comes from you and you only.”
“But to grow stronger, I need them. Otherwise, I cannot harm the soldiers,” I countered, despite the lack of conviction behind that belief. It was the truth, but once again, my very being tried to reject it.
“Are you certain? Have you, only once, tried to stand up to a soldier by yourself? Without the help of weapons or other items?”
I opened my mouth, trying to tell her about my first encounter with a soldier, but even then it was the purple liquid that saved me. The times after that, I just kept using the mandibles since it was the fastest and easiest way. There was no reason for me to risk dying when I had a proven method of killing them.
I used anything at my disposal to survive, and there was nothing wrong with that, but it was also true that I always relied on mandibles to defeat my enemies. Could I really say I was getting stronger if all I did was pick up stronger and stronger weapons? Was not the very reason behind my longing for strength to be able to rely on myself, and only myself?
“I… have not,” I answered.
“Then why are you so adamant on thinking yourself weaker?”
The answer to that was simple: Because I was. It started at the soldier’s level, but there were also their bodies, which were armored and equipped with deadly, paralytic mandibles.
“They are twice my level.”
“Sure, if you look at your species levels that might be true, but you have something none of the Exapoda possess.”
Only one thing came to mind.
“A class?”
Veraxia nodded. “Classless species like Fänggen or the Exapoda can only level their species, but in return receive much more stats per level. However, below level 100, these differences are rather small. Now, you have level 40 soldiers, but what if you add up your levels then you are what? 50? 60?”
“61,” I corrected.
This idea never truly crossed my mind, but this essentially placed me at a higher level than any Exapoda I had seen before. At the same time, this meant that level 40 Exapoda were still stronger than me, so either they were exceptionally strong for their level, or my stat bonuses until now really had been abysmally low and left me far weaker than the average person on my level. I disliked both scenarios.
“You might think that there is a significant stat difference between you and them, but you should also consider that the Exapoda are very physical creatures. As someone who put only one or two stat points into Strength until now, there is no way you would be on a similar level to them.”
It was something I had never considered before, but her point was valid. Still, this just meant that I was a bad match-up for them, since I was at a physical disadvantage, but lacked the skills and ability to make up for that.
But, this gave me the idea for a new approach. An approach that might free me from my dependency on mandibles. A level 30 mandible could break through a level 25 drone’s exoskeleton, but not through that of a level 40 soldier.
By that logic—and assuming that I was considered to be level 61—parts of my own body should be capable of the same thing. Now, my Strength, Vitality, and Agility all were not up to par with the Exapoda, but if their mandibles were as powerful as they were due to their physical stats, then I would need to use parts of my body that were influenced by my highest stats. And as of right now, there was only one part of my body that fit those criteria: My mana.
***
After the realization dawned on me, I had some things to sort out. Mainly, to make myself more familiar with my mana and the ways to manipulate it. I had already decided that I wanted to improve with the skill, but I always did it on the side, while traveling.
I had made an arrow but failed at shooting as if fired by a bow and disregarded it as something that would change with an increase in my stats, but Veraxia reminded me that this mindset was lazy.
“There exist many skills whose performance is based on stats. Stats raise the bare minimum performance but also increase the total limit of said skill. What this means is that a skill’s strength is not solely based on stats, but also training and understanding.”
I had already experienced something of the sort, but now that Veraxia confirmed it, that meant getting even stronger, it was not enough to level and gain skills, but I would also need to train with those skills and try to improve them outside of leveling.
After listening to her explanation, I conjured some mana. I let it dance over my fingers and swirl around in my palm. After a while, I gathered it in one place and molded it into the form of a knife. Since mana was weightless, I felt as if carrying nothing at all, which was quite a useful feature for someone like me.
Mana was a fundamental part of my body, and as such moved the way I wanted it and acted like I wanted it to. When I touched the edge of the blade, thinking it was too weak to cut a soldier, I felt a dull edge that was unable to cut even my skin. This was interesting because back in the outer core, my mana arrow cut through soldier meat quite easily. At that time, there was no time for me to think about being unable to do it, I just did it because it needed to be done.
My talk with Veraxia and the resulting realization had me suspect something. What if it was not my mana that was too weak, but my own imagination was lacking? What if, by thinking myself weak, I subconsciously limited myself? Would that not mean that if I changed my mindset, my mana would follow along?
I looked once again at the mana knife in my hand and focused on the blade.
It is a sharp blade. A sharp blade. A sharp blade. I repeated the same phrase in my mind and when I once again ran my finger across the edge of the blade, it cut into my flesh and drew blood.
“It worked,” I whispered to myself, too immersed to care about the pain.
“What worked?” Veraxia asked from the side, glancing at my bleeding finger.
“You were right,” I started, barely holding back my excitement, “my imagination seems to be directly tied to my mana. I think I have subconsciously made myself weaker due to that!”
Veraxia nodded knowingly. “People dabbling in magic do not work with their bodies, but with their minds. For them—that includes you—confidence in their own ability is just as important as training and levels.”
I dispelled the mana knife in my hand and looked at Veraxia with a new goal in mind.
“I’m going back to the outer core. I need to try something out.”
I wanted to test if this really was changing anything at all, but for that, I needed a test subject. Luckily, there should still be a few corpses around that I could use.
Veraxia spat out a piece of the drone’s exoskeleton as she licked her teeth. “The mana in my body is still being processed. I cannot fight. You would have to go alone.”
Only a few moments ago, this would have been enough to discourage me, but not anymore. First of all, we were not that far away from the outer core, so if there were bugs, I would likely have heard them already. Secondly, she just told me to be more confident in my abilities. And if being alone was enough to hinder me from doing what I wanted, then wouldn’t our entire conversation be for nothing?
“It’s fine. I have no intention of fighting while you are not there. I just need to try something.”
“And that cannot wait?”
“It could, but I don’t want to.”
Waiting for Veraxia to finish her meal would be boring, and going back into the outer core was the best I could do during that time, even if it bore a small risk. If everything went well, I would be able to make some important tests with mana and even get the mandibles I lost back.
There was no good reason for me to go now, everything I planned on doing, I could do later, too, but maybe because of my recent flash of inspiration, I felt like doing something on my own. If using mandibles was already making me dependent, then I could not get used to Veraxia always being there for me.
All of that being said, there was no denying both the usefulness of the mandibles and Veraxia. The latter would be by my side during this whole endeavor no matter what, and as for the mandibles, just because I wanted to get rid of my dependency on them, did not mean I could not use them at all. They were still and would remain, a useful asset. I just had to watch myself that I was not going to rely on them too much.
Not backing down from my idea to go back alone, Veraxia stared at me for a while, before sighing. “Fine, have it your way. I will catch up as fast as I can. Just do me a favor and avoid danger as much as possible,” she said, her tone hinting at both impatience and concern. It was quite clear that she did not like me going alone.
I showed her a thumbs-up and started to make my way to the outer core.
***
As it turned out, Veraxia’s travel speed distorted my perception of the distance between us and the outer core, so the walk back actually took a little longer than I expected. However, rather than being a bad thing, I saw this as an opportunity.
Once again, I conjured a mana knife, but poured even more mana into it, elongating the blade slightly and making it thicker. The result was a dagger. Adding even more mana, I turned the dagger into a sword and took a few swings.
I did not have the strength to wield a normal sword, but this one had no weight. While I was by no means a swordsman, only these few swings showed me why humans thought with these things. Maybe not the most effective against giant bugs, but—as I had seen in the past—they were quite suitable for humans and things of similar size, but for the Exapoda, something with more reach would be more practical.
Deforming the sword, I made the handle longer and only added a sharp tip to one side, almost like an arrow, just bigger. Spears were weapons I had not seen very often, but the clan members guarding the cells often carried them. And unlike the sword, handling one was a little more difficult.
Last on my list for melee weapons was an axe. It was the preferred weapon of Malik, a tool for slaughter and a potential giant killer. Shaping it from memory alone turned out to be quite difficult, it required a lot of mana—about three hundred—and maintaining it was straining. In the end, I had to give up.
Afterward, I just switched around between weapons, trying to shorten the time it took me to change shapes. This was just an idea that came to my mind as I made different types of weapons, but if I managed to perfect this ability and learned how to wield the respective weapons, I would be able to change my approach to a fight depending on my opponent.
***
After some time, I arrived back at the outer core. The whole travel took a considerable amount of time. It was not unlikely that Veraxia had finished her meal and was already on her way here, which would make this entire solo journey of mine lose its purpose altogether. Well, at least I spent the time trying out new things and improving myself, so I guess it was not entirely for nothing.
The outer core was quiet, and when I peered downward into the entrance area, a sense of disappointment washed over me. None of the corpses that had been here when left remained and the only traces they left behind were blood stains and the damages we had done to the environment.
There should have been thirty-five lifeless bodies, but now they were nowhere to be seen. They did not waste any time to eat their brethren. I was almost impressed at how eager they were to eat them.
With the corpses gone, the very reason for coming here vanished, but I refused to believe that It had all been for naught, so I prepared to climb down into the chamber nonetheless. I had seen in the past that they did not eat the mandibles, so maybe I would at least find some of those lying around.
“You are overreacting,” Veraxia commented casually from the sidelines as I paced back and forth. She casually gnawed on a piece of drone meat, but I could not muster the same composure. With the mandibles gone, my combat prowess shrunk significantly. While Veraxia was there to deal with soldiers for now, I would not be able to do anything if ever faced with one on my own again.
Veraxia’s attitude and her loud chewing were not helpful in the situation. “I am not,” I grumbled back at her.
“You are. And I do not understand the reason,” she said, raising her head and swallowing the meat in her mouth. There was some truth to her words. There was no real reason to actually fuss over it since I could easily retrieve them when we returned to the outer core, but without them, I felt strangely powerless.
“I am weak without them.” The words just came out, and despite them being the hard truth, something within me repulsed at the admission. Never before had I illusion that denied reality. I was weak, that sole fact was the reason for all the suffering I went through, and yet, it felt like my very soul was rejecting this objective fact.
Amid my confusion, it was Veraxia who pulled me out of my train of thought. “You are weak, even with them. If you keep relying on weapons and equipment, you will never become strong. You will delude yourself into thinking that you are, but in reality, you will grow dependent. True strength comes from you and you only.”
“But to grow stronger, I need them. Otherwise, I cannot harm the soldiers,” I countered, despite the lack of conviction behind that belief. It was the truth, but once again, my very being tried to reject it.
“Are you certain? Have you, only once, tried to stand up to a soldier by yourself? Without the help of weapons or other items?”
I opened my mouth, trying to tell her about my first encounter with a soldier, but even then it was the purple liquid that saved me. The times after that, I just kept using the mandibles since it was the fastest and easiest way. There was no reason for me to risk dying when I had a proven method of killing them.
I used anything at my disposal to survive, and there was nothing wrong with that, but it was also true that I always relied on mandibles to defeat my enemies. Could I really say I was getting stronger if all I did was pick up stronger and stronger weapons? Was not the very reason behind my longing for strength to be able to rely on myself, and only myself?
“I… have not,” I answered.
“Then why are you so adamant on thinking yourself weaker?”
The answer to that was simple: Because I was. It started at the soldier’s level, but there were also their bodies, which were armored and equipped with deadly, paralytic mandibles.
“They are twice my level.”
“Sure, if you look at your species levels that might be true, but you have something none of the Exapoda possess.”
Only one thing came to mind.
“A class?”
Veraxia nodded. “Classless species like Fänggen or the Exapoda can only level their species, but in return receive much more stats per level. However, below level 100, these differences are rather small. Now, you have level 40 soldiers, but what if you add up your levels then you are what? 50? 60?”
“61,” I corrected.
This idea never truly crossed my mind, but this essentially placed me at a higher level than any Exapoda I had seen before. At the same time, this meant that level 40 Exapoda were still stronger than me, so either they were exceptionally strong for their level, or my stat bonuses until now really had been abysmally low and left me far weaker than the average person on my level. I disliked both scenarios.
“You might think that there is a significant stat difference between you and them, but you should also consider that the Exapoda are very physical creatures. As someone who put only one or two stat points into Strength until now, there is no way you would be on a similar level to them.”
It was something I had never considered before, but her point was valid. Still, this just meant that I was a bad match-up for them, since I was at a physical disadvantage, but lacked the skills and ability to make up for that.
But, this gave me the idea for a new approach. An approach that might free me from my dependency on mandibles. A level 30 mandible could break through a level 25 drone’s exoskeleton, but not through that of a level 40 soldier.
By that logic—and assuming that I was considered to be level 61—parts of my own body should be capable of the same thing. Now, my Strength, Vitality, and Agility all were not up to par with the Exapoda, but if their mandibles were as powerful as they were due to their physical stats, then I would need to use parts of my body that were influenced by my highest stats. And as of right now, there was only one part of my body that fit those criteria: My mana.
***
After the realization dawned on me, I had some things to sort out. Mainly, to make myself more familiar with my mana and the ways to manipulate it. I had already decided that I wanted to improve with the skill, but I always did it on the side, while traveling.
I had made an arrow but failed at shooting as if fired by a bow and disregarded it as something that would change with an increase in my stats, but Veraxia reminded me that this mindset was lazy.
“There exist many skills whose performance is based on stats. Stats raise the bare minimum performance but also increase the total limit of said skill. What this means is that a skill’s strength is not solely based on stats, but also training and understanding.”
I had already experienced something of the sort, but now that Veraxia confirmed it, that meant getting even stronger, it was not enough to level and gain skills, but I would also need to train with those skills and try to improve them outside of leveling.
After listening to her explanation, I conjured some mana. I let it dance over my fingers and swirl around in my palm. After a while, I gathered it in one place and molded it into the form of a knife. Since mana was weightless, I felt as if carrying nothing at all, which was quite a useful feature for someone like me.
Mana was a fundamental part of my body, and as such moved the way I wanted it and acted like I wanted it to. When I touched the edge of the blade, thinking it was too weak to cut a soldier, I felt a dull edge that was unable to cut even my skin. This was interesting because back in the outer core, my mana arrow cut through soldier meat quite easily. At that time, there was no time for me to think about being unable to do it, I just did it because it needed to be done.
My talk with Veraxia and the resulting realization had me suspect something. What if it was not my mana that was too weak, but my own imagination was lacking? What if, by thinking myself weak, I subconsciously limited myself? Would that not mean that if I changed my mindset, my mana would follow along?
I looked once again at the mana knife in my hand and focused on the blade.
It is a sharp blade. A sharp blade. A sharp blade. I repeated the same phrase in my mind and when I once again ran my finger across the edge of the blade, it cut into my flesh and drew blood.
“It worked,” I whispered to myself, too immersed to care about the pain.
“What worked?” Veraxia asked from the side, glancing at my bleeding finger.
“You were right,” I started, barely holding back my excitement, “my imagination seems to be directly tied to my mana. I think I have subconsciously made myself weaker due to that!”
Veraxia nodded knowingly. “People dabbling in magic do not work with their bodies, but with their minds. For them—that includes you—confidence in their own ability is just as important as training and levels.”
I dispelled the mana knife in my hand and looked at Veraxia with a new goal in mind.
“I’m going back to the outer core. I need to try something out.”
I wanted to test if this really was changing anything at all, but for that, I needed a test subject. Luckily, there should still be a few corpses around that I could use.
Veraxia spat out a piece of the drone’s exoskeleton as she licked her teeth. “The mana in my body is still being processed. I cannot fight. You would have to go alone.”
Only a few moments ago, this would have been enough to discourage me, but not anymore. First of all, we were not that far away from the outer core, so if there were bugs, I would likely have heard them already. Secondly, she just told me to be more confident in my abilities. And if being alone was enough to hinder me from doing what I wanted, then wouldn’t our entire conversation be for nothing?
“It’s fine. I have no intention of fighting while you are not there. I just need to try something.”
“And that cannot wait?”
“It could, but I don’t want to.”
Waiting for Veraxia to finish her meal would be boring, and going back into the outer core was the best I could do during that time, even if it bore a small risk. If everything went well, I would be able to make some important tests with mana and even get the mandibles I lost back.
There was no good reason for me to go now, everything I planned on doing, I could do later, too, but maybe because of my recent flash of inspiration, I felt like doing something on my own. If using mandibles was already making me dependent, then I could not get used to Veraxia always being there for me.
All of that being said, there was no denying both the usefulness of the mandibles and Veraxia. The latter would be by my side during this whole endeavor no matter what, and as for the mandibles, just because I wanted to get rid of my dependency on them, did not mean I could not use them at all. They were still and would remain, a useful asset. I just had to watch myself that I was not going to rely on them too much.
Not backing down from my idea to go back alone, Veraxia stared at me for a while, before sighing. “Fine, have it your way. I will catch up as fast as I can. Just do me a favor and avoid danger as much as possible,” she said, her tone hinting at both impatience and concern. It was quite clear that she did not like me going alone.
I showed her a thumbs-up and started to make my way to the outer core.
***
As it turned out, Veraxia’s travel speed distorted my perception of the distance between us and the outer core, so the walk back actually took a little longer than I expected. However, rather than being a bad thing, I saw this as an opportunity.
Once again, I conjured a mana knife, but poured even more mana into it, elongating the blade slightly and making it thicker. The result was a dagger. Adding even more mana, I turned the dagger into a sword and took a few swings.
I did not have the strength to wield a normal sword, but this one had no weight. While I was by no means a swordsman, only these few swings showed me why humans thought with these things. Maybe not the most effective against giant bugs, but—as I had seen in the past—they were quite suitable for humans and things of similar size, but for the Exapoda, something with more reach would be more practical.
Deforming the sword, I made the handle longer and only added a sharp tip to one side, almost like an arrow, just bigger. Spears were weapons I had not seen very often, but the clan members guarding the cells often carried them. And unlike the sword, handling one was a little more difficult.
Last on my list for melee weapons was an axe. It was the preferred weapon of Malik, a tool for slaughter and a potential giant killer. Shaping it from memory alone turned out to be quite difficult, it required a lot of mana—about three hundred—and maintaining it was straining. In the end, I had to give up.
Afterward, I just switched around between weapons, trying to shorten the time it took me to change shapes. This was just an idea that came to my mind as I made different types of weapons, but if I managed to perfect this ability and learned how to wield the respective weapons, I would be able to change my approach to a fight depending on my opponent.
***
After some time, I arrived back at the outer core. The whole travel took a considerable amount of time. It was not unlikely that Veraxia had finished her meal and was already on her way here, which would make this entire solo journey of mine lose its purpose altogether. Well, at least I spent the time trying out new things and improving myself, so I guess it was not entirely for nothing.
The outer core was quiet, and when I peered downward into the entrance area, a sense of disappointment washed over me. None of the corpses that had been here when left remained and the only traces they left behind were blood stains and the damages we had done to the environment.
There should have been thirty-five lifeless bodies, but now they were nowhere to be seen. They did not waste any time to eat their brethren. I was almost impressed at how eager they were to eat them.
With the corpses gone, the very reason for coming here vanished, but I refused to believe that It had all been for naught, so I prepared to climb down into the chamber nonetheless. I had seen in the past that they did not eat the mandibles, so maybe I would at least find some of those lying around.
