Chapter 50: Leaking Mana

Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Leaking Mana

Harvesting the cores took another two hours after the fight itself ended.

The tree-monsters hadn’t died cleanly. Most of them had collapsed into tangled heaps of branch and root, their actual cores buried somewhere in the center of a mass that had to be hacked through layer by layer before anyone could even see what they were working with.

"This one’s crushed," Gareth muttered, tossing aside a dull, cracked husk that might have been worth some decent money an hour earlier. "Second one this stretch."

"Their morphology’s working against us," Frank said, not looking up from his own work. "Normal monster, cores are usually somewhere predictable.

These things have them buried wherever the trunk happened to form around it.

A good chunk of them probably broke the moment the thing stopped moving."

Jason worked through his own share in silence, cutting carefully through dense, splintered wood with small, controlled bursts of Fire along the blade’s edge, trying to spare whatever core sat beneath each one.

By the time they’d finished, the bag of salvaged cores felt disappointingly light for the length of the fight it had cost them.

---

The Gate had started showing signs of strain by the time they dragged everything toward the exit, a faint, uneven shimmer rippling through the air that hadn’t been there when they’d first stepped through.

"Destabilizing," Frank said, glancing upward. "It’s completely normal, since it’s been this long after the boss died.

It’s energy’s been leaking out since the moment it dropped."

Jason felt it more clearly than that description suggested, small, steady currents of mana threading past him toward some unseen point of release, visible to his senses in a way he hadn’t expected.

’Didn’t notice this in the ant Gate.

The currents were probably too weak for my senses to pick up.’

This one was much clearer.

More than the increase in his strength, Jason’s understanding of the world around him deepened with every gate experience.

They cleared the exit with a few minutes to spare, the shimmer behind them seeming like it would collapse into sparkles in no significant amount of time.

They split up at the site without much ceremony, Frank heading to the association branch to handle the sale while the rest of them went their separate ways.

---

Jason was two streets from the branch, mask already tucked back into his bag, when his phone buzzed.

[Reeve]: E-Rank Gate booked for tomorrow. This one’s far more promising than the ants.

I even managed to get Cassius in too.

He typed back quickly.

I’m In. What time?

[Reeve]: Morning, I’ll send details. One thing though, Wen’s not going to be available tomorrow so heads up.

Everything okay?

[Reeve]: Not sure, honestly. She canceled last minute, didn’t say why. Hoping it’s nothing serious.

He frowned slightly at that, a small, nagging concern settling in alongside everything else the day had already given him, though there wasn’t much to do with it from where he stood.

Let me know if you hear anything.

[Reeve]: Will do.

He pocketed the phone and kept walking, turning the day over in his mind as he went.

The thought settled in clearly.

He’d need to keep accepting Jobs from Reeve’s crew every once in a while.

If only to keep up appearances as an F rank.

He couldn’t afford for his family to get suspicious.

’Two lives need two sets of proof.’

---

He stripped off the mask and cloak two streets from home, tucking them into his bag before anyone familiar could catch sight of him carrying either, and let himself in through the front door looking, once again, like nothing more than a tired hunter back from an ordinary day.

Novaria was waiting in the living room in deep discussion with Judith.

If she’d noticed his entrance, she didn’t let it show.

"You’re later than usual," she said, finally looking up at him, watching him drop into the chair across from her.

"Core harvesting ran long. Half of them were crushed, had to dig through the rest."

"Thank’s again Mrs Judith." Jason said to Judith who had just picked up her bag to leave.

"It’s all in a day’s work Mr Jason." She said as she shut the door behind her.

He let the exhaustion show plainly now that he was alone with Novaria.

"Reeve just mentioned an E-Ranked Gate booked for tomorrow.

I’ve decided I’m going."

"Already planning a third life on top of the two you’ve got."

"Keeping the first one convincing takes effort."

"That’s good thinking, actually." She studied him a moment, approval clear in her expression, then nodded toward the empty chair he hadn’t fully sat down in yet. "Tell me about this one first though."

So he did.

---

He walked her through the whole fight, the forest coming alive the moment Gareth’s taunt pulled its attention, the vines and roots moving with the same coordinated, deliberate hostility,

Fire gathering along the blade’s edge in a way that cauterized every cut instead of wasting itself outward.

He told her about the vine that caught him across the ribs early on, how Marcus had called out his overextended reach, how he’d tightened his stance after that and started actually landing clean hits.

She listened without interrupting, turning the details over the way she always did.

"Wait," she said, once he’d finished. "You said the first vine caught you because you swung too wide.

It’s probably a habit you picked up from using a spear so much."

"Right."

"And you corrected that after Marcus called it out."

"Yeah."

"Did you correct it, or did you just stop making that exact mistake for the rest of that fight?"

He paused.

’...Fair question.’

He thought back through the rest of the battle, the smaller, tighter cuts he’d used afterward, and realized, somewhat uncomfortably, that every adjustment had come reactively, in the moment, rather than from any real structural change to his stance.

"That’s the difference between surviving a mistake and not making it again."

She said it without judgment, simply stating the fact. "You’ll run into something eventually that doesn’t give you the luxury of a correction mid-fight."

"Fair."

He huffed. "I’ll do it properly this time."

"Good." She allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. "Drill the stance before you go back out.

Shorter range, tighter pivots. Don’t wait for another vine to remind you."

"Yes, ma’am."

"And the E-Rank with Reeve tomorrow, that’s just cover, or is it a real job too?"

"It’s both." He rubbed at his eyes, exhaustion finally catching up to him fully now that he’d stopped moving.

"Cassius is in. Wen’s not, apparently she canceled last minute. Reeve didn’t say why."

"Hope it’s nothing serious."

"Same."

---

That night, exhaustion sat heavy in every joint, the forest’s assault having cost him more than he’d let on over dinner.

He cultivated anyway.

He always did.

It had become less a decision at this point and more a fact of his existence, as automatic as breathing, the quiet hours on the floor beside Novaria’s bed where mana drew in and refined down through his Core regardless of how spent his body felt.

Some nights it was effortless.

Some nights, like tonight, it took real, grinding discipline just to hold the pattern steady.

He held it anyway.

’However tired I am. Doesn’t matter. Strength doesn’t wait for convenient nights.’

By the time he finally let himself sleep, the Core had gained what it always gained on nights like this, a small, honest increment, nothing dramatic, just another brick laid in a foundation he intended to keep building for the rest of his life.

He lay there a moment longer before sleep took him, running through tomorrow’s shape in his head.