In the distance the sun slowly dived below the horizon.
From the top floor balcony Valthar watched the streets bellow.
And inside his chest the life force he gathered throughout the day was slowly assimilated into his energy ring.
His energy ring pulsed, a sudden shift and Valthar felt something click.
Like a snowball rolling down a mountain the pulsed grew in strength.
In moments the minute life force dispersed in the air around started to vibrate in sync with Valthar's energy ring.
Soon the pulses traveled further and what synced wasn't just the life force in the air but also the life force from the people in nearby rooms.
Those who had at least one mana ring or a F rank knight body only felt a slight euphoria.
But for those with neither a sudden wave of energy flooded their bodies, as if they had just taken two energy drinks right before bed.
Valthar noticed the life force from dozens of people shift and immediately tried to hold back on the pulses.
And much to his surprise, the pulses reduced themselves to the room the moment he thought of it.
With the pulses under control Valthar shifted his attention to his mana sense, as his life force ring approached its full form the range of his senses expanded fast.
From 5 kilometers to 6, then 7, 8, 9 and finally 10 kilometers away.
With double the range, the area it covered grew even overwhelming.
And while his body had adapted to filtering extra information, the sheer amount he suddenly received was just too much.
Valthar's legs shook and he gripped the brown cane tightly so as to not fall to the ground.
With deep breaths he tried keeping consciousness, even as his vision grew white with pain.
It was then that a change took place.
From the final 10 kilometers his life sense started to shrink.
9, 8, 7, 6, 5 and then, it kept going.
Smaller and denser, but the influx of information didn't decrease, only increased.
From people's approximate age to approximately how healthy they were, Valthar suddenly found himself flooded with such insights from thousands of people.
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Gritting his teeth he let himself fall to the ground, holding himself conscious with everything he got.
Last time he had fainted was at the Church and that time he spent a week in a coma, a situation Valthar refused to repeat again.
All the while his life sense kept decreasing, from 5 kilometers, to 1 kilometers, then to a few hundred meters.
And finally Valthar felt the wave of information slowly lose its strength.
Instinctually Valthar felt he could expand the sense back with a single thought, but he did not dare to test it out.
Instead he controlled the life sense to shrink further, small enough to just reach a meter or so away from him.
Slowly he caught his cane from the ground and raised himself, in his mind a carbon copy of his own body stood out.
From the broken veins to deep burn scars hidden in between his muscles nothing escaped this condensed sense.
And it was ugly, his body was devastated both on a physical and on a magical level.
The only silver lining being the now significant amount of life force coursing around his veins, but what benefits did that bring Valthar only had guesses for now.
"Its just like Water Scan, but better." Valthar mumbled, thinking of a first ring water spell healers used to find injuries.
Needless to say, his condensed life sense was just better, since the base version of the spell didn't offer such a detailed copy.
And while you could spend extra mana to super charge Water Scan to achieve a similar level of detail, Valthar's life sense cost him nothing in terms of energy.
With a smile Valthar limped to the bed, in his mind his attention had already shifted to the green ring of metaphysical energy that circled around his heart.
A new part of himself that shifted completely his identity.
Now he was no longer just another aspiring apprentice, but a true full blown first ring mage.
Like a kid on christmas morning he watched the ring slowly spin in his chest, gleeful as small amounts of life energy were slowly formed and spread around his body.
Physically he felt… like shit, his body had a long way to go before full recovery.
But mentally? He felt blessed.
Like a ray of sunshine had just squeezed out from the clouds of bad luck that seemed to hound his every move in recent days.
With a smile he watched the energy zip around his body, soon he would start experimenting, but for a moment he let himself bathe in his achievement.
*
Slowly Valthar raised his hand in up and commanded the life energy to gather itself in a ball on his hand.
The Bolt spell series was the most simple use of mana, a series almost every element could do.
Yet life force is not elemental mana.
While it did gather in Valthar's hand under his control it simply did not take any physical form like elemental mana would do.
It was to the point that Valthar's eyes couldn't even see the ball of life force and only through his life sense could know it was there.
"Congregate and shoot forward, Life Bolt!" Valthar tried to chant a common verbal cast for very basic spells.
Even for elemental mana chants were truly only useful for either the most basic training or very complex spells.
And for life energy it felt even less effective.
The ball of life force shot forward, but less than a meter away it already dispersed most of its energy into the air around.
And funny enough most of it seemed to come back to Valthar's body by itself, at least the life energy that dispersed inside Valthar's life sense.
The small amount that made it out did not return, though Valthar doubted it had gone very far.
With that Valthar crossed out the first spell from his mental test list.
At least for now Life Bolt was a low value spell that didn't seem worthy of putting time into.
Hopefully with other spells the situation would differ and in his heart Valthar had a small guess of what spells would work.
The same ones he could cast with mana when he had his mana veins…. Healing spells.
