Chapter 122: Mana and Ley Line Nodes

Jess made his way into the Wizard's Sanctum library with practiced ease—and ended up near the language shelves almost without thinking. He had spent so much time studying Orcish here lately that his feet knew the way.

He turned back and asked a librarian for books about mana, mental strength, and stamina. To his surprise, the floor and section the librarian directed him to required him to show his apprentice's badge. Anyone who wasn't an apprentice couldn't even get to those books.

Until now, Jess had mostly looked up subjects that supported his studies, such as alchemy and herbalism, or languages. This was his first time looking for books about magic itself.

Perhaps the Wizard's Sanctum followed some general rule laid down by the Council of Tirisfal against the careless use of arcane magic.

There were an enormous number of books about human mana. Shelf after shelf covered the subject. Over thousands of years, humans had carried out who knew how many experiments trying to discover what mana really came from. Oddly enough, very few of the books were studies by elves.

After reading several works on the source of mana, Jess realized that high elves didn't seem especially interested in questions like how to raise the upper limit of one's magical power or mental stamina.

They had the Sunwell.

The Sunwell was a magical well on the Isle of Quel'Danas, north of Quel'Thalas. It was the holiest site of the elven kingdom and the foundation of its civilization.

Ten thousand years ago, the War of the Ancients had destroyed the Highborne's Well of Eternity, brought down their imperial capital of Zin-Azshari, and shattered their dream of ruling forever.

The nobles, cast down from their lofty position, were captured by those they had once considered beneath them—the people who would become the night elves. They were forced to give up arcane magic and accept a more natural way of life. But not all the Highborne were willing to do that.

Dath'Remar Sunstrider, ancestor of the royal family of Quel'Thalas, stole a vial of water from the Well of Eternity that the night elves had been guarding. He crossed the ocean to the eastern continent, then divided between two great troll empires. Those vials were among the last things left of the destroyed Well of Eternity.

The water was poured into a magical spring in Quel'Thalas and became the powerful Sunwell, giving the Highborne a second home.

For thousands of years, the elves who called themselves the highborn people had sacrificed countless lives defending it. Their civilization had always depended on the power of magical waters to grow and flourish, from the first days when the Highborne walked ancient Kalimdor to the present.

Whether they were the Highborne of old or the elves of modern Quel'Thalas, whenever they wished to use magic, the seemingly endless energy of the Well of Eternity—or later, the Sunwell—was there for them.

Those elves and their magical wells had grown together. In a sense, the wells had brought them into being and raised them. The elves might be able to go without food or water, but they couldn't stay away from their magical wells for too long.

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And in return, the wells cared for them, protected them, and even indulged their demands.

For elves who never strayed far from one, mana was as easy to call upon as the air around them. Only primitive races living far from civilization would rack their brains trying to squeeze out a little extra magical power.

Jess realized that the bookshelves he was looking at represented all the brain-racking those supposedly primitive humans had done.

By observing elves and studying their surroundings, humans had reached a conclusion: to increase one's magical power, one needed to stay close to a source of magic and allow prolonged exposure to strengthen the mind.

Some people kept casting spells, actively drawing arcane energy around themselves. Through repeated contact and communication, they improved their bodies' affinity for magic and strengthened their mental powers.

What Marin hadn't told him was that others chose to live near sources of natural magic: the ley lines, the most powerful channels in the magical network spread beneath Azeroth.

Or better yet, the greatest sources of all—ley line nodes.

A node was a place where countless ley lines met. Jess knew that one of the strongest nodes in Azeroth was in Northrend, home of the blue dragons. It was called the Nexus. In the dragon language, the words for the Nexus and a ley line node were the same.

Another lay to the south, quite close to Stormwind, at Karazhan. Even the blue dragons believed Karazhan stood where nearly all the great ley lines came together.

As with the Nexus and Karazhan, the other, weaker nodes had long since been occupied by temples and capitals of all kinds. The magical spring that gave rise to the Sunwell, for example, was itself a mighty node, no less impressive than Karazhan or the Nexus.

Jess could understand why Marin hadn't mentioned this method. An apprentice like him had no way of going anywhere near one of these powerful sources of magic to live and train.

Every node was either guarded by troops or dangerous simply to approach. The explosion at Karazhan had devastated the whole of Deadwind Pass and even blackened half of the Elwynn region. And that was without considering the horrors beneath Karazhan's tower.

As for the Sunwell, Jess couldn't help giving a bitter smile just thinking about it.

Few humans could even pass through the high elves' gates into Quel'Thalas at present. Getting beyond the runestone defenses and the seemingly unbreakable magical barrier called Ban'dinoriel to enter Silvermoon City was another matter entirely.

The Sunwell lay farther north still, beyond Silvermoon's white walls and golden rooftops, across a stretch of sea. According to legend, every elf guarding it belonged to a royal or powerful noble family—the best of the best.

Never mind humans. Even elves without sufficiently noble blood weren't allowed near it.

What a headache. A terrible headache.

The more Jess learned, the harder increasing his mana seemed. If he hadn't learned all this, he might at least have stayed blindly optimistic.

He kept searching for other nodes, hoping to find one he could actually reach. He even came across records of mages studying the frequent appearances of elemental creatures in Westfall, including accounts of attempts to communicate with elementals in a language from Kalimdor.

Who would have guessed that some mages from the Wizard's Sanctum were so desperate to become stronger that they had tried to take up shamanism on the side? They were pushing themselves harder than he was. At least warlocks and mages had something in common.

In a geographical record of Hillsbrad, he found a note about a sleeping ley line beneath Ambermill that ran straight to Dalaran.

Of course. Dalaran itself was a ley line node. No wonder human and elven mages had chosen to build a city there, a refuge for spellcasters mistrusted by the other kingdoms.

Jess felt a sudden thrill at the thought that he would be boarding a ship for Dalaran in just two days.

He had been born in Lordaeron and had grown up in Tirisfal and by Lake Lordamere, yet he'd never entered that city of magic. He had never even been close. He had only glimpsed its faintly violet towers from far across the lake.

He hoped the journey would go smoothly. Please, no more unexpected trouble.