For a moment, the two of us stood against each other, staring the other one down.
"Are you threatening me?" the Overseer asked, squinting his eyes. His fingers tightened into fists as his aura condensed.
'That was unnecessary,' I thought, taking a deep breath to calm myself down.
My words were nothing more but a distant shadow of the feelings boiling all the way at the bottom of my soul. The feelings that I continued to do my very best to distance myself from.
But on the other hand, I couldn't just let this fucker do whatever he wanted. Some sort of resistance was a must.
"I'm just answering the question you asked... senior," I replied in the same cold tone that I used to utter my previous sentence with.
Once again, the air turned silent. For a second, I could perfectly hear even the slightest noise of the animals from the forest nearby, the wind rustling between combs of herbs and leaves of the trees.
"Fine," the Overseer shook his head only to avert his eyes and turn around.
But instead of explaining exactly what he meant with this 'fine' of his, he simply walked away to his tent.
Not sure what was going on, I just stood in place, grasping the spear in my hand to give myself a bit more confidence.
'Am I turning into a psychopath?' I thought, realizing what my new encouraging token was. 'Or is seeking courage from one's weapon a perfectly normal thing?' I asked myself, suddenly regretting never taking any psychological course back on earth.
'Well, it doesn't matter,' I ultimately decided. 'It's not like the comfortable civilization of earth could tackle any of the problems I will face in this bloody world.'
Just as I was about to give up and leave to make myself a new resting place, my Overseer emerged from his tent.
The one thing that changed about him was the content he held in his hand.
"Here," he barked, throwing the small sack towards me.
Even though it was entirely different from the small bag the pathfinder was using, I could tell it was actually the same thing.
A bag with the formation stones required to set up the amplification array.
"To set it up, just open the bag and shake it, throwing the stones around," the man said. "They will set themselves up in the array on their own," he instructed.
I looked at the Overseer's face with a genuine surprise.
Even though this was the very request that I made... I didn't expect him to actually do me this favor!
"What about the..."
"I don't have any training pillars," the man shook his head. "They are stationary. You will only find them in the sect training grounds... But at our level, they are useless," he added.
"Thank you... Senior..." I uttered, hardly able to cope with my surprise.
Yet, even with how surprised I was, I couldn't help but notice the slight change to my Overseer's expression.
It felt as if... a mask that he assumed cracked a little.
'Whatever that implies, I don't give a fuck,' I quickly thought, shaking my head and turning around. 'It doesn't matter if he was acting or not,' I squinted my eyes, squeezing the bag with the stones in my hand. 'I will make him pay for what he's done,' I decided before walking away from him.
With the array stones in my hand, I didn't give two shits about my Overseer anymore.
After walking near the edge of the woods, I opened the bag up and swung my arm, allowing the stones to fall out of it. Just like it was the case when pathfinder did it, the stones somehow fell in a perfect circle, setting up the amplification array on their own.
'I will have to research how they do it someday,' I thought to myself, feeling as if this simple thing held pretty important information.
What the locals of this world most likely considered as a natural occurrence could give me a lot of insights into the inner workings of the mana in this world.
In the end, I still refused to accept magic and spiritual energy as something mystical. My scientific upbringing that Earthly civilization infused in me made it impossible for me to accept something for what others likely considered it to be.
But now wasn't the time yet for me to delve into the theories behind mana and the magic as a whole. Without books, proper basis, and funding for the research, I was powerless to figure it out.
Leaving this topic in the back of my head, I stepped into the formation.
"Aaah..." I released a breath of relief in an instant. Although I continued to absorb a tiny amount of mana on my own, the experience was simply incomparable to sitting in the middle of the amplification array.
I continued to take shallow and then deeper breaths for a few moments, allowing the mana to rush into my body.
In the end, the major part of my exhaustion came from overstraining my mana reservoir. Now that it started to fill again, I could feel my body refreshing at a noticeable rate.
'I need to train,' I quickly realized.
As great as it felt to just let the mana revitalize my body, it was actually a harmful process. Just like with any other thing, allowing oneself to slack didn't mean standing in place but regressing instead.
I stretched the fingers in both of my hands. Then, I stood in the position, giving a great deal of care to make sure it was proper.
And then, with a spear in my hand, I struck forward.
'That was bad,' I instantly realized.
The feeling just wasn't the same as when I managed to land a perfect strike. I fixed my stance and gathered my focus again. If I wanted to progress, I had to train properly. Doing things the easy way wouldn't do me any good.
'Let's see if I can break through the beginning phase of my spearmanship tonight!'
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