Manaless Mage

“Mana steal…” He muttered.

Suddenly, the mana left in the body of the beast started rushing into Harry’s hand.

The body itself slowly became pale and pale, until it was no more than bones with patches of meat around it.

[+3200EXP]

Harry nodded his head when he saw the notification that flashed across his eyes.

As expected, mana still did its work as efficiently as usual.

Mana flowed in the bodies of those who could weird it, whether actively or passively. So removing the beast core from a mana beast, doesn’t mean its body would suddenly become void of mana.

The mana around its body would still remain there and it was this “residual mana” that Harry absorbed using [Mana steal].

While the EXP was small—as expected, it was still something.

Even though Harry hardly used it so as to avoid the strong mana sense of the instructors, he acknowledged [Mana steal] as a powerful ability.

The power to draw out mana and convert it to EXP for his growth was definitely anything but ordinary.

If he was able to find a way to utilise it more in combat, his total strength would definitely step up by a notch.

Looking at the dry body of the beast, Harry felt somewhat unpleasant at its appearance. He grunted slightly before stepping away from it.

Staring at his fingers that were pretty much stained with blood, Harry realised how careless he had been with all the extraction.

Though he didn’t feel any disgust or repulse from it, he didn’t like the appearance either.

The position of beast core he just extracted was a lot deeper than the former two, so it took a bit of effort to draw it out, resulting in his fingers getting coated with blood.

Usually, students just stored both the bodies and the beast core without even bothering to extract it.

They would then take it to one of the shops in the “hub” where it would be extracted for them by the use of a machine.

Then from there, they would decide how to use the beast core; whether to sell or absorb.

Unlike Harry, normal Elementalists couldn’t just absorb beast cores in one go, so for them, this was the best choice.

‘Now that I think about it… it’s somewhat strange. I haven’t come across much students…’ Harry mumbled.

While not students loved venturing into the beast forest, the number of those they did weren’t so small that they were insignificant.

Most of them were stage one elementalist, so they usually filled this part of the forest that contained stage one mana beast.

However, apart from the two Elementalists he met earlier—Jon and Earl, he hadn’t come across anyone else, whether from Vane or Rittah academy.

He could only guess that this was because of the upcoming competition, most of them were probably busy with training.

He didn’t think about it too much anyway, it wasn’t like he cared.

“Ahh…” Harry sighed. His eyes suddenly became fiercer as he said: “Now, time to go hunt some more mana beasts.”

***

The figure of a brown haired male could be seen standing in front of a beast with faint blue stripes and small eyes.

The body of the beast was not too large, however, its hindlimb stood out due to the way they bent backwards awkwardly.

One of the eyes had a deep cut in its place, and its body was also charred and riddled with different kind of wounds.

Unlike the brown haired male whose feet stood firmly on the ground, the body of the mana beast was trembling greatly and it looked like it was really having a hard time remaining on its feet.

The figure which was unsurprisingly Harry suddenly jumped back while keeping a smile on his face.

Stretching his hand forwards, only two words left his lips: “Lightning Ball.”

Immediately, Lightning snaked around his hand, rapidly merging into a medium sized ball.

Without letting a single second go to waste, Harry pushed his hand forward slightly and then released the attack.

The ball of lightning shot through the air with astonishing speed, leaving a small trail of lightning.

The mana beast howled into the sky with anger and desperation when it sensed the danger behind that attack.

It immediately tried to dodge by twisting its body, but unfortunately for it, it was too slow and the lightning ball closed in on it within seconds.

It hit in right at the side of its neck, causing a mini explosion of lightning and leaving its fur charred.

The beast howled in pain as its neck caved in and it finally dropped to the ground, dead.

[1 Striped Dog Killed]

[+4000EXP]

“Finally… the fifth beast has been taken down.” Harry mumbled with a relaxed smile.

His breaths were a little heavy and his clothes had already gotten quite dirty.

It wasn’t that he was exhausted or anything but all those running and jumping around in the forest definitely pumped him up a little.

However…

“Too easy… it’s starting to get too easy.” Harry mumbled with a slight frown.

At that moment, a system notification flashed across his eyes.

===

[Optional Quest Completed!]

[Rewards Granted: 50 skill points] ｂ𝚍ｎｏｖ𝚕．ｃｏｍ

===

As he read through the notification, Harry couldn’t help but smile in joy.

Finally, he completed the quest!

Some minutes had passed since he killed the second mana beast—the bat-eyed dog, and during those minutes, he had advanced even further into the forest and had taken down more mana beasts.

The mana beasts he came across were all weaker than the scaled pig he met earlier so they were quite easy to finish off.

The first one was a [One horned goat], if attacked mainly with its horn and was also slow when it came to speed, so it was the easiest beast he met so far.

At it took was a few wind blades to finish it off.

The second was a pig-type with good defence and slow attacks, however, it was also easy as its thick skin didn’t stand a chance against Harry’s skills.

The one he just took down was actually a bit stronger than the other two, but it still stood no chance against Harry, especially due to its weakness against lightning attacks.

So basically, stage one mana beasts were too weak for him now! The amount of EXP he got from the last two barely amounted to 5000 when added together!

“Well, if stage one beasts don’t reward me that much, then I guess I’ll just go after the ones in the second stage.” Harry muttered.

His eyes stared off into the distance and his lips slowly curled into a smile. “It’s time to head deeper into the beast forest…”

The only reason he kept on going after stage one mana beast despite such low EXP reward was due to the quest to kill five stage one mana beasts.

Though he didn’t have to do it since it was only optional and didn’t come with any punishment, fifty skill points wasn’t something he could just pass up on.

But now that he had finally completed his quest, there was nothing stopping him from venturing deeper into the forest!