The Fearless War

A Fight with a Mana Hangover

My eyes adjusted to the light, and I could only think that it was a bad joke, I was where I had fought with the armored golem, but the room was spotless, the damage on the wall seemed to have never happened and even the remains of the golem in question had completely disappeared. Remembering the first time I appeared before the tower in the valley I concluded that I only had three more floors to go before reaching the end. I decided before going up to the next floor to try to control mana inside the tower, Uncle Miles did not have a specific name for where the spiritual body sent people, but I decided to call it the spiritual or mana plane.

A name that was filled with irony in no time because when I tried to absorb mana, I could not even feel anything in the environment. I had to strain my eyes to even try to see my spiritual veins, and when I tried to see the rest of the room, I noticed that outside the tower there was a constant flow of mana, but for some reason it could not pass from the walls to the inside.

Despite that I was able to activate my vision, but part of my veins began to contract and lose brightness, I quickly stopped reinforcing my eyesight. It seemed that the veins themselves were composed of a certain amount of mana that fluctuated in my body, which explained how I could to a certain degree amplify my vision at times. I got up and climbed the stairs whose curved design I had become accustomed to seeing to some degree, filling me with anxiety, not knowing what kind of golem awaited me. On the third floor I could not see or hear any golem, nor could I see any box or piece of furniture as on previous floors.

I scoured the floor looking for anything but finding nothing hidden I approached the next stairs only to be greeted with a blow to the face. Already on the floor I could see a golem coming down from the fourth floor, no weirder than the previous ones. Unlike the armored one, this one had a more similar appearance to the first one I fought, but behind its back it had two extra arms, which it seemed to be stretching as it came down.

"So bare-knuckle this time, eh?"

It was already becoming normal for me to talk to golems despite receiving no response, but when I asked it, its head seemed to nod as it arranged its four arms in a fighting stance, putting the front ones in guard while the hind ones it placed on top of its shoulders.

The golem spun around me and when I managed to see it stop, I could only duck my head, I could not hear everything it was doing, I had become so used to controlling my senses that I did not realize that just as there was a lack of mana, my senses such as my hearing were just as they were before I awakened my spiritual veins. I concentrated my energy in my head to have something like the real world, while dodging right blows and hooks to my back. After a while I could begin to hear the golem move as it struck and when it prepared to throw a blow its chest vibrated generating a tiny noise.

Managing to escape from the corner where it had cornered me, I got on its back and threw a blow to what should be the spine, the blow did not touch it and my fist was received by one of the back hands that had turned in less than a second. Without warning, it flipped his entire torso and began the barrage of attacks again, so I had to retreat, but I couldn't get far enough away to be able to keep trying to counterattack.

After several moments without being able to hit anything, I tried to force my eyes to see the mana for a short period of time so as not to exhaust what I had with me. As I dodged a hook aimed at my face, I saw how each arm of the golem had large amounts of mana circulating inside, the torso and legs seemed to be without a trace of mana.

I stopped seeing mana the moment I felt my arm seem to feel sluggish and without energy, the last thing I saw was my veins shrinking and becoming colorless. And as if responding to my spiritual body my right hand went limp. I quickly moved my stance to fully defend with my left and the golem continued its barrage of blows that I was now having more trouble dodging. If my eyesight had not failed me when I analyzed the golem, it should be without mana and movement in the torso, but the arms full of it allowed it to move.

I ducked and slid under the golem, getting behind it again and propelling myself with my legs, I pulled a rear arm of the golem, causing it to come down with me on the ground, without losing the opportunity I placed myself on top of it and with the strength I had left in my left hand I pulled completely its rear arms. They separated with a snap, and I jumped backwards as I felt the golem was going to get up.

With his arms in my hand, I began to feel a sensation like when I faced my mother, after a moment I felt my veins open completely again and the mana in my arms that I had pulled out had been extinguished, I had completely absorbed it. It was little in comparison to what I was used to, but it was more than enough for me to strengthen my eyesight and my fists. Leaping forward I gave a fist to the head of the golem that was still stunned for having lost mana. It fell again and I took the opportunity to keep hitting it on the ground. My vision started to return to normal, but I kept hitting the golem almost finishing its torso and head.

My arms began to lose mobility and my vision became blurry just as I completely broke the golem's joints. I carefully got up from the ground, but I was dizzy, without realizing it I had absorbed the remaining mana from the golem's front arms and spent it as well. My vision was becoming increasingly blurry and meaningless, until my other senses began to be affected as well. I couldn't hold concrete thoughts, but I struggled up to the next floor, every step I took up the stairs I felt my head throbbing with increasingly intense pain.

On the fourth floor I found in the center of the room a carpet with symbols of alchemy and others that I almost recognized from the book of magic that I had read, they were known as runes and were used in the making of magical tools or to imbue weapons or objects with some specific magic. The moment I approached, I felt the little mana left in my spiritual veins being absorbed and directed to the carpet whose runes and symbols began to glow with a light that went from red to gray as if it was breathing.

I dropped onto the carpet and the brightness of the carpet increased, my vision blurred even more, and I lost track of time. It felt as if my body was under constant pressure and my spiritual veins were moving restlessly as they expanded and contracted. It was neither a sensation of pain nor one of discomfort, but at the same time it felt foreign to me. Each side of my body was beginning to feel a deeper relationship to my spiritual veins, I knew this as I felt a comforting warmth on my right side and on my left side, I felt an emotion of strength but one that was also capable of attack. Both sensations gradually calmed my senses, and I could open my eyes fully, I could hear again, and my body felt revitalized.

Without getting up, I reinforced my sight without any problem, and I saw something that stunned me. The walls of the tower still prevented the mana from entering, but for some reason I was able to force the mana from the outside towards me, I was even able to do it unconsciously.

My veins no longer looked like clusters and the color was more concentrated, even though there seemed to be no change in their shape, the structure they formed was more defined and stable. While I was checking the spiritual veins, I looked at my chest and, in the center, where before there was a tangle of veins there was a pure black sphere. No matter how hard I looked I could not find a definite shape other than the color.

The mana concentrated in the sphere or core of my spiritual body and then distributed it throughout my body, strengthening it without having to think about it. Yet if I wanted to focus on one part, I could simply think about what I wanted to reinforce and how much. I tried to experiment even more and realized that although the rate at which I absorbed mana increased, it was even faster than the time it took me to breathe.

Up to that point I had only concentrated on improving specific parts of my body as the situation required, but now I felt capable of more. I moved concentrated mana from my hands to my feet and from side to side when I fell on something. I had defeated the golem, but it had not awakened yet. I looked at the mana flow but the golem from the previous floor was still out of mana and hadn't moved at all. I looked up and there was a large accumulation of mana. On the fifth floor there seemed to be several golems with the same characteristics as the one I had fought.

I jumped up the stairs to the fifth floor and before I entered the staircase, I reinforced my fists and before the first golem that appeared in front of me realized what was happening, I planted a fist in its head that ended in a clean hole where its face would be. Grabbing the momentum of the blow, I passed the mana from my left fist to my legs and kicked two golems that were approaching from behind. I stayed on top of them as the pressure of the concentrated mana on my feet caused them to fall.

"It really is easier with my veins tidied up."

I began to declare to myself as I continued to defeat golems left and right. At one point when I found myself surrounded with several golems pointing their 4 arms in my direction, I absorbed a larger amount of mana for my entire body without a problem and as I jumped to dodge the blows, I almost hit the ceiling. I fell carefully and concentrating a greater amount on my right and with my open palm I tried something.

"Woah! yeah, it works, eh?!"

The room was filled with the sound of the arms and torsos of the golems being cut while my reinforced arm served as an improvised sword, had they not been made of wood I don't think I would have been able to cut them by myself. Already in the center of the room and with no more golems to defeat, I felt the familiar sensation of awakening.