Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Chapter 66: Sour

Wood splintered, falling to pieces, the pillar broke down, taking what it was supporting with it in its fall, dust was risen, and only silence followed to destruction.

"Alright, your aim is… Fine actually, you just have no control over your own spell and it flickers around like a drunk fly in a hurricane" Helena waved her hand, blowing away the debris, revealing Milo’s poor track record.

A single target was placed in the space in front of them, it was intact, unlike the wall behind it, which had more holes in it than cheese.

Milo’s inner manipulation was much too rough to form a stable spell just yet, he couldn’t really correct the trajectory with outer manipulation since he wasn’t gifted enough in that department to hope to do anything with it at the moment.

Whilst Milo had appeared to have average talent in most categories, he had shown tremendous progress in certain aspects, enough to convince Helena that his talent was actually pretty great.

Still, the most important categories were the ones relating to manipulation, and he was definitely not great in those, he could form a simple mana bullet and shoot it out, but as demonstrated, it wasn’t doing him much good.

In fact, the more he was practising with mana, the worse it was getting due to making tremendous progress in other categories.

Usage, output, speed, resistance and range had grown by leaps and bounds.

The raw, base power of his mana was impressive, the speed was so great already that it made Helena believe that his golden attribute was actually just fancy, golden lightning with how proficient he seemed in that category.

Combined with the resistance of his mana to the outside elements and interference as well as his incredible range, he was well set to go on the path of a long-range mage, specialising in precise spells.

They had also tested his usage a bit, and he could overcharge his spells even further, they hadn’t attempted this since for obvious reasons.

Milo actually needed to learn how to tone down those aspects of his mana to hope to get anywhere, with his current manipulation, he would never control any spells.

"Listen, don’t get discouraged so easily, you have a bright future, don’t bother compressing mana, just form a mana bullet with the least amount you can manage"

Helena raised her hands to get his attention.

"Magic and mana control is heavily tied to your imagination, will and control, strong emotions will show in your spells, and that’s bad, it almost always result in awful control and half-assed spells, steady your breathing and don’t wallow around, you have to will it over and over again until it does it, there is no secret, you to repeat it the same action" she had explained this a few times already, but much like what she was explaining, it was best to teach the same thing multiple times to be sure it was understood.

"You can do it" she stepped back and winked at him.

’Ah shit’ Milo was feeling quite a fair bit nervous, he did understand well what she was saying, and he had been trying to apply her teachings everytime, but it always spiralled out of control the moment he decided to manifest the spell.

It would always seem like everything was under control whilst he manipulated his inner mana, but that was because it was still inside of him, the instant the spell went off to do its thing, chaos would ensue.

He was rather pleased with the sheer power, that thing would blow the regular schmuck on the street to pieces, which was also a problem, Milo didn’t want to turn a random passerby into red goo.

He put his all into his next attempt, and the next, and then the one after that, again and again until he was laying flat on the ground with drained reserves.

"I don’t feel much progress Helena" he said, looking completely spent, as it turns out, training magic was also pretty tiring physically, since he was always trying to stand perfectly still and holding his hand up.

"You are progressing Mimi, it’s just that your mana’s power and speed do so at a better rate than your manipulation" she extended her hand to him, hoisting him up without much difficulty.

He didn’t quite know how to feel about the cute nickname, it seemed like a good sign but he didn’t want anyone to hear her call him that.

"I didn’t want you to bother with all of this, but I guess there is no use, most beginner mages actually use incantations and hand signs at first to help with their manipulation, it’s not the same sort of incantations and movements used by great mages however, they have no other purpose than to help with learning" she shook her head.

Helena had learned this way, however, this was quite problematic in its own rights, if you were taught to use those things for everything, then it may become difficult to stop doing so, using incantations and signs without greater purpose was idiotic, and frankly dangerous.

It was preferable to not bother with this if possible, but Milo seemed to be a rare case where they would actually be needed for him to progress.

"In any case, let’s do this tomorrow" the two of them made their way back to their lodging in the city.

On the way there, it was clear that the majority of the death hunters had cleared off, replaced instead by mercenaries and adventurers interested in the bounty on the undead, they hung around and talked big games, claiming that they were going to dive into the deep caverns and such.

Most of them only took about ten steps into any given entrance before promptly turning around, either encountering too tight of passages for them to be comfortable squeezing in, some of them straight up never came back, which was to be expected, this place wasn’t left largely unexplored for no reason.

There were no chances that any of them would actually manage it, even when cornered, the undead had managed to escape, a few ill-prepared fools wouldn’t do much better when they were in unfamiliar and unfriendly territory.

’...’ Milo suddenly felt sour.