SSS Awakening: I am the First Legendary Mage

Alex did not wrap the Mana Thread around the blade like a vine. He kept it perfectly straight and slowly moved it forward, spreading it across the blade of the sword.

The process reminded him of painting, except instead of a brush, he was laying down an incredibly thin layer of compressed mana over steel.

This Mana Thread was about twenty inches long. The length increased since he no longer used his focus to keep it hardened.

Nearly six inches rested over the hilt while the remaining fourteen stretched across the blade. Once he was satisfied that it remained stable, he moved on to the next step.

Alex began vibrating the mana inside the Mana Thread. He only affected the section covering the blade while leaving the portion on the hilt completely still.

If the idea worked, the vibrations would turn the Mana Thread into a moving edge far sharper than the sword itself.

A harsh metallic sound echoed through the tunnel.

The blade was sliced almost immediately. Alex stopped the spell before any serious damage could be done and stared at the fresh cut in the steel.

The Mana Thread wasn’t only vibrating outward. It was vibrating in every direction, including toward the blade supporting it.

He tried limiting the vibration to one side, but nothing changed. The mana inside the Mana Thread was compressed too densely for such delicate control.

Directing the movement of individual mana particles was far beyond what he could currently manage.

A second approach quickly came to mind. Instead of relying on a single Mana Thread, he would create two layers.

The outer layer would vibrate and act as the cutting edge, while the inner layer would remain stable and absorb the vibrations before they reached the sword.

Creating another Mana Thread from scratch was impossible. Maintaining one already demanded nearly all of his focus, so he chose a different method. Rather than making a second thread, he tried splitting the existing one into two separate layers.

Sweat slowly rolled down his forehead as the Battle Instinct Spell pushed his concentration to its limit.

Every bit of focus he possessed went toward separating the compressed mana without breaking the spell entirely. The process felt painfully slow, but little by little, the Mana Thread began to divide.

It worked.

Only half the blade was covered before Alex reached his limit, but that was enough. The outer layer vibrated violently while the inner layer remained stable, protecting the sword beneath it. Even with only half the blade reinforced, the increase in cutting power was obvious.

Alex was running out of stamina. Reinforcing his mind through the Battle Instinct Spell consumed far more energy than he had expected, and every passing second made the exhaustion worse. Even so, he forced himself to continue because there was one final idea he wanted to test.

The Mana Thread still covered the hilt, connecting it to the portion on the blade.

That section constantly occupied part of his concentration, so he wondered if he could decompress the Mana Thread on the hilt without affecting the rest of the spell.

If he succeeded, he would have more mental space available.

He tried decompressing the Mana Thread on the hilt.

The Mana Thread on the blade disappeared with it.

Alex rebuilt the spell and tried again. The same thing happened several more times before he realized the problem was not the spell itself but his own habit.

His mind automatically treated the entire Mana Thread as a single construct, so releasing one part caused him to unconsciously release the rest.

He repeated the process over and over until he finally succeeded. The Mana Thread covering the blade remained perfectly stable while the section over the hilt was no longer a highly compressed thread of mana.

In its place was only a faint glow of lightly compressed mana, enough to support the spell without requiring the same amount of concentration.

Alex carefully reduced the compression even further.

The glow weakened, but as soon as he pushed beyond a certain point, the Mana Thread on the blade became unstable.

He stopped immediately, realizing that this was the current limit of his control.

Even so, the improvement was significant. The hilt no longer demanded nearly as much attention as before, leaving more room for him to manipulate the Mana Thread itself.

Without wasting the opportunity, Alex used that freed concentration to extend the Mana Thread farther along the blade.

His vision suddenly went dark.

He lost consciousness for only a split second. When he came to, every spell had already collapsed, and he found himself breathing heavily with sweat soaking through his clothes. Dark spots drifted across his vision, making it difficult to focus on anything.

There was no headache.

Alex remained seated while his breathing slowly settled. Until now, he had believed the headache and the dark spots were caused by the same thing, but that clearly wasn’t true.

The headache came from improperly reinforcing his brain with the Body Reinforcement Spell, while the dark spots were simply the result of exhausting his stamina.

It explained why he had never noticed the difference before. Every previous time he had reached this point, leveling up had restored his energy almost immediately. The recovery had hidden the symptoms before he could understand what they actually meant.

The conclusion made perfect sense. The Body Reinforcement Spell strengthened every part of his body, but strengthening something did not remove its energy requirements.

A stronger body simply consumed more energy to keep functioning.

’Stamina is going to become a serious problem as my Body Reinforcement Spell and Battle Instinct Spell continue improving. The stronger they become, the more energy my body will burn.’

Alex quietly considered his options. ’There are only two solutions I can think of right now. I either start investing stat points into Constitution, or I find a way to reinforce my stamina itself.’

The first option was hard to choose, even if it made sense.

He had already decided to put nearly every stat point into Mana because something told him abandoning specialization would become a mistake later.

Still, if his stamina couldn’t keep up with his growth, specializing in one stat might create an entirely different problem.

’I’ll think about it later.’

There was no point worrying about future decisions when he couldn’t make them yet. He didn’t have any stat points to spend right now anyway.

He reached into his pocket and took out an Energy Bar. He broke off a small piece instead of eating the whole thing, then slowly chewed it.

Warmth spread through his body, and the exhaustion weighing down his limbs quickly began to fade as his energy recovered.

Only after relaxing did he notice the blue notifications waiting before his eyes.

During his experiments, he had been so focused that he hadn’t even realized the System had been trying to get his attention.

[Mana Thread Spell has leveled up. Level 3 → Level 5.]

[Battle Instinct Spell has leveled up. Level 2 → Level 3.]

..

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