Chapter 4 – Crystal Lessons

Rock walls bordered two sides of the Mycelial Garden. They looked like bones gnawed by some colossal beast, their dark gray layers riddled with honeycomb pits.

Clusters of deep purple crystal had formed in some of the hollows, scattered across the stone. Mana was always more concentrated around these Amethyst Crystals than elsewhere.

The so-called Mining Zone existed to harvest them.

Burying an Amethyst Crystal in the soil did not turn it directly into nutrients. Instead, it drew ambient mana from the air, increasing the efficiency with which the hyphae harvested it.

Many of the Puffcaps in the Mining Zone possessed the Chitinous Shell skill. They formed thick armor over their caps and used it to chip crystals from the wall.

At only LV4, the shells were not especially hard. Mining was slow, and the impacts sometimes killed the Puffcaps themselves. Evan’s resources were limited, however. Extracting any crystals at all was achievement enough.

Elara had set her sights on a fist-sized Amethyst Crystal and was struggling to clasp it between her short legs.

“What are you doing?”

“E-Evan?”

The pink Puffcap jolted so violently that she tripped over the crystal beneath her.

“Don’t start talking inside my head without warning...”

“Do we have another way to communicate? Get used to it.”

Elara considered that and had to admit he was right. She still doubted she would ever grow accustomed to someone speaking into her mind whenever he pleased.

“You have so many Mana Crystals here.” She picked up the Amethyst Crystal again, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

“Mana Crystals? You mean the Amethyst Crystals I use to enrich the soil?”

“Enrich the soil?”

A green-capped Puffcap hopped forward and lifted the cap of a large mushroom nearby. Half an Amethyst Crystal stood buried beneath it.

“You use Mana Crystals as fertilizer?”

“What else would I do with them?”

“They’re Mana Crystals! You can use them to make magic items or as the foundation of a magic circle. Even small fragments can serve as spellcasting materials. How can you waste them on soil?”

Elara sounded heartbroken, as though Evan were destroying priceless materials in front of her.

“Have you forgotten that this is a dungeon? They do have another use, though.”

A tendril woven from hyphae emerged beneath a mushroom and activated the skill [Bind LV3]. It wound around an Amethyst Crystal half the size of a palm, fastening crystal and Puffcap together.

Mana poured steadily into the crystal. Its dull surface brightened, then began to flicker. The Mana Crystal became dangerously overloaded.

Once cracks appeared and the crystal began to shriek under the strain, the Puffcap bounded into an empty patch of ground with its burden.

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It exploded.

The shock wave knocked Elara over again.

“Powerful, isn’t it? These are excellent against monsters.”

Elara lay on the ground, unable to find words.

She had just watched Evan expend a C-grade Mana Crystal as a disposable weapon, producing an explosion comparable to an LV4 Fireburst. With a little refinement, that same crystal could have become the core material of a wand used by a Silver-rank adventurer.

Not even the most ignorant newly rich noble in the Southern Federation would squander precious magical materials like this.

The crystal set in Elara’s personal wand had only been B-grade.

“You still haven’t told me why you wanted one,” Evan said.

The abrupt return to the question caught Elara while she was still silently condemning his extravagance. The truth slipped out.

“I want to try casting through it.”

She grew nervous as soon as she spoke. Elara did not know whether Evan would regard her magic as a threat. If he did, her life might be over.

“Oh? Didn’t you say you couldn’t cast after becoming a Puffcap?”

There was no suspicion in his voice, only curiosity. Elara relaxed.

“I only want to try. Casting through a Mana Crystal might let me bypass the limitations of a Puffcap’s body.”

“Go ahead.”

Another tendril emerged beneath a mushroom, curled around the Mana Crystal beside Elara, and extended it toward her.

Elara instinctively retreated two steps, but it caught her and tied the crystal to the top of her cap.

“Be careful. These tendrils are fragile. Don’t break it.”

Bind was a stolen skill being forced through hyphae, so Evan could hardly expect the result to be sturdy.

Elara held herself still and focused on a spell: Glimmer, something even an apprentice could cast with ease.

An orange-yellow orb appeared above her cap. It brightened and dimmed as the mana sustaining it fluctuated.

After flickering for a while, the light stabilized. Elara had found the trick.

“It worked! It really worked!”

She jumped in excitement.

The tendril snapped instantly. The Mana Crystal fell to the ground, and Glimmer went out with it.

Mycelial tendrils truly were very fragile.

“S-sorry...”

Evan did not care about the lost hyphae. All his attention remained on her spellcasting.

“Try casting it again.”

“I can’t without the Mana Crystal.”

“It doesn’t matter if you fail. Cast it so I can see the difference.”

See?

Elara did not understand what he meant, but she attempted Glimmer on her own.

It failed, just as every previous attempt had.

Evan, who had been observing her closely, saw more.

[Mana Sense LV4]

He had plundered the skill from a magical vine called the Noctis Tendril, which had once lived in this part of the garden. The vines used Mana Sense to find prey before crushing it with their tendrils. Bind had come from them as well.

Although the magical plants had been fairly high-level, they could not move. To Evan, they had been meals waiting to be harvested. They were now extinct in this region.

He regretted that. Both of the Noctis Tendril’s skills had proven extremely useful. At the time, he had cared only about claiming territory and had not planned ahead. If he had preserved some seeds, he could have raised the vines in the Breeding Zone alongside the Roller Beetles and Slimes, periodically slaughtering them to extract skill proficiency.

Through his mana sight, Evan watched the energy flowing through Elara. It moved smoothly at the beginning of the spell, but stalled at every node and never formed a complete circuit. It was as if she were using the wrong casting method.

That was impossible. She had successfully cast Glimmer through the Mana Crystal only moments before.

The likelier cause was the difference between human and Puffcap anatomy. In simple terms, her hardware no longer matched the system she was trying to run.

The Mana Crystal provided an independent environment better suited to the spell’s operation.

It reminded Evan of the way he had to modify Puffcaps before they could use a given skill.

“Can you cast any other spells now?”

He knew from the panel that she was a dual-affinity Tier 4 mage, and he wanted to see more magic.

“I’ll probably need practice. I’m not used to channeling mana through a Puffcap’s body, and the cloudy areas inside this unpolished Mana Crystal interfere with the spell. I need time to adjust.”

“Cloudy? So the purer the Mana Crystal, the better?”

Evan had never understood that. He knew only that burying the crystals gathered mana. When some worked better than others, he had assumed size was responsible. Purity did not appear to matter when using Detonation.

“Of course. Archmage Zorya’s staff is said to hold a perfectly pure S-grade Mana Crystal. Any spell cast through it becomes three times as powerful!”

“S-grade? They have grades too? Wait here.”

A short while later, two Puffcaps appeared before the puzzled Elara, carrying a huge crystal of flawless clarity between them.

“An A-grade Mana Crystal? And it’s as long as an arm?”