Chapter 96: A Mage’s Next Step
"Why did you buy so many bedsheets?" Max asked.
As far as he remembered, they already had enough to keep changing them for months.
Zerena stopped setting the bags down and gave him a flat look.
"Did you see the one you spent the whole evening cumming on?" Zerena asked. "Even if you tore it down to individual threads and washed every single one of them, I’m never sleeping on it again."
She set the bags of food on the table beside the stairs before adding with a tired sigh,
"I’m already having nightmares about sleeping on the same mattress..."
Max blinked.
Personally, he didn’t see the problem.
As long as something was washed properly, he’d happily use it again.
He’d honestly assumed Zerena was just as frugal.
"So these new ones won’t let anything soak through to the mattress," Zerena said matter-of-factly. "They wash easily too. From now on, we’ll only use them whenever those horrible System quests show up."
Max peeked inside the bag.
Seven mattress protectors.
He didn’t bother checking the price tag, but they looked and felt expensive enough that even he could tell she hadn’t bought the cheapest option.
For a brief moment, Max felt slightly wronged.
She kept calling the System quests horrible.
Meanwhile, his penis would’ve happily nominated them for Activity of the Week.
"So," Zerena asked, glancing toward his workstation, "are you done with the potions?"
Max smiled brightly and nodded.
"And... I have a surprise for you."
Leading Zerena over to the workbench, he gestured proudly toward the neatly lined-up potion bottles.
She frowned slightly.
At first glance, nothing seemed different. The quality looked the same, and after a quick count, so did the number.
She turned back to Max with a questioning look.
Without saying a word, Max reached beneath the table and placed two more potion bottles beside the others.
Zerena blinked.
Then a smile slowly spread across her face.
"You increased the quantity again?" she asked, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. "Did the quality go down?"
Max immediately shook his head.
"Still B+."
"Good... that’s good."
She repeated the words with an approving nod, the smile on her face growing a little wider.
By then, her mind had already abandoned the laboratory entirely.
It was somewhere else...
Quietly multiplying profits.
"After we’re done supplying the army with the remaining sixty bottles, you should start working on another potion recipe," Zerena said, looking over the neatly arranged bottles.
Max nodded.
"I was thinking the same thing." He paused. "But first, I should probably make my first Mana Ring, shouldn’t I?"
Zerena smiled and nodded back.
"I almost forgot about that." She gave herself a small shake of the head. "You’re right. Make that your first priority tomorrow morning."
"What about earning System Points?" Max asked, sounding genuinely worried.
His biggest concern wasn’t the Mana Ring.
It was the possibility that he wouldn’t get another full day to rub his penis between her thighs.
Before Zerena could answer, he hurriedly continued,
"The thigh quest only has about thirty-eight hours left. After that, we’ll only be left with the one where you have to masturbate..."
Then he suddenly paused.
His expression became even more worried.
"...Wait."
"That one isn’t going to disappear at the same time too.."
Zerena looked visibly annoyed the moment Max brought up that masturbation quest again.
She’d been hearing about it for nearly a week now.
"Then do it tonight if you want," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Hell if I care."
Setting the food aside, she reached into the larger bag and pulled out three unusually bright green potions.
Even before she handed them over, Max noticed how clear they were. They almost seemed to glow.
"Just don’t complain if you fail," Zerena said. "I’m not paying for another set."
Max nodded absentmindedly.
His attention had already been completely stolen by the potions.
The mana inside them was so densely concentrated that he could actually feel it. It was as though the surrounding mana in the room was being quietly pulled toward the bottles. Even the nearby herbs seemed to be slowly leaking wisps of mana in their direction.
"I’m going to eat," Zerena said, heading toward the stairs. "Until then, clear your head and go over the process one more time."
She glanced back at him.
"I’ll stay nearby and keep watch while you’re making the ring."
Max smiled.
Creating the first Mana Ring wasn’t something people usually attempted alone.
Unlike forming a Mana Core—where once the process began, even the person creating it could do little besides decide how large they wanted it to become—a Mana Ring demanded constant control from beginning to end.
One mistake could ruin hours of preparation.
Which was exactly why having another mage present was considered common practice.
As Zerena headed upstairs, Max cleared the center of the laboratory before sitting down cross-legged on the floor.
He took off his shirt first.
People usually sweated quite a bit while forming their first Mana Ring, and he’d rather not soak another shirt today.
After settling into a comfortable position, he picked up the book and went over the process one last time.
The thing about magic in this world was that almost anyone could use it.
Not true magecraft like Max practiced, but through runes, ordinary people could still accomplish all sorts of things. Heat water, light fires, preserve food, strengthen tools—if someone knew the right runes and had enough mana to power them, magic wasn’t entirely out of reach.
Mages, however, were different.
Once a Mana Core had been formed, many simple spells no longer required rune arrays at all. As long as a mage understood an element well enough to manifest it, they could create flames, manipulate water, or move other basic elements directly with their mana.
If the element already existed nearby...
The task became even easier.
That was where Mana Rings came in.
Each ring greatly increased a mage’s control over the type of mana it was formed from. A Fire Mana Ring made controlling fire feel more natural than every other element, while at the same time deepening the mage’s understanding of fire-related runes.