Infinite Mana - Chapter 185: The Next Step (Thank you for your support, Graham!) (Patreon)

Actual summoned creatures sounded even better. If the magical contract itself established cooperation, then reliability might become part of the spell rather than something Sieghart needed years to develop through relationships. Unfortunately, he still needed to learn proper creature Summoning or Beast Taming before either option became remotely practical. Until then, humans were irritatingly available.

Sieghart looked toward the injured adventurers again and decided that offering healing services could become the easiest way to begin evaluating potential temporary companions without committing himself immediately. He could practice First Aid, earn additional money, learn which parties entered the deeper levels regularly, and observe which adventurers seemed competent enough that joining them would not feel suicidal.

That sounded suspiciously similar to interviewing potential coworkers before accepting a short-term contract, which somehow made the entire situation easier for Sieghart to tolerate.

One miner who had purchased reinforced gloves earlier noticed Sieghart watching the wounded groups and raised an eyebrow in his direction.

Sieghart immediately looked toward his carriage as though inspecting something extremely important because he was not quite ready to advertise healing services before planning how much attention that might attract.

First, Barrier Magic.

That remained the priority. If Sieghart eventually joined a party, being able to place a barrier between several temporary companions and a charging iron golem would make the entire experiment considerably safer. It would also provide exactly the kind of genuine defensive situation the System seemed most likely to recognize as meaningful White Magic progress rather than simple repetitive training.

Everything was beginning to connect together in an annoyingly efficient progression path that involved considerably more social interaction than Sieghart would have designed personally. Barrier Magic would improve defense. A temporary party could accelerate White Magic and Summoning. Deeper expeditions would provide better cores, rarer ores, and information about the abnormal golem reproduction.

Sieghart sighed while looking toward the arguing group across the camp, already suspecting that the System had once again found an indirect method of encouraging him to interact with people.

“So this is how it starts.”

He had left Seraphina because he wanted greater independence, yet his own progression paths were gradually pushing him toward finding companions again whenever complete isolation stopped being efficient.

At least temporary allies remained very different from permanently depending upon someone. Sieghart could tolerate limited cooperation if the people involved were competent, practical, and capable of respecting boundaries.

 The following morning, Sieghart reopened the folding counter attached to his carriage with another collection of equipment he had engraved during the previous evening, mostly shields, bracers, reinforced gloves, and several pieces of inexpensive protective armor. He had spent more time than intended preparing the merchandise because the first batch had sold almost immediately, and recovering some of the money sacrificed inside the capital remained high on his list of practical objectives.

The camp reacted much faster this time. Several miners who had purchased equipment previously approached before Sieghart finished arranging everything, while other explorers arrived after hearing that the young merchant had produced another batch overnight.

Apparently, selling useful equipment once was enough to establish a small reputation around a place where everyone regularly got punched by stone creatures weighing several hundred kilograms. Sieghart sold two reinforced shields within the first twenty minutes, followed by impact-resistant gloves and a breastplate whose internal runes distributed blunt force across a wider section of the armor.

While wrapping one customer’s newly purchased bracers, Sieghart finally decided to test the second service he had considered offering after noticing how many injured explorers wandered around the camp.

“I can heal injuries too.”

The man standing across from him stopped counting coins.

“What?”

Sieghart gestured toward several bruises covering the man’s exposed arms before pointing toward the bandages wrapped tightly around his torso beneath an open leather vest.

“Cuts, bruises, fractures, damaged muscles. Depends on the injury.”

The customer stared at him with considerably more suspicion than he had shown toward the magical equipment. Apparently, selling enchanted shields looked more believable than claiming medical competence.

“You’re a healer too?”

“More or less.”

“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”

Sieghart shrugged.

“You don’t have to pay if I make you worse.”

The man stared at him.

“That sounds even less reassuring.”

Despite the complaint, the explorer eventually glanced toward the people standing nearby before carefully loosening the wrappings around his chest and exposing several dark bruises across his left side. His breathing changed noticeably whenever he moved, and Sieghart immediately recognized the careful posture of someone trying to avoid expanding their ribs more than absolutely necessary.

Magic Vision showed disturbed mana around the injury, while ordinary examination and First Aid gave Sieghart enough information to recognize multiple fractures without requiring anything more invasive.

“Three broken ribs.”

The man raised an eyebrow.

“Two.”

“One has a smaller fracture.”

The customer frowned and pressed carefully against another section of his chest before immediately regretting the decision when pain forced him to stop.

“Fine. Three.”

Sieghart raised one hand and activated First Aid, allowing warm White Mana to flow into the damaged area instead of simply flooding the entire torso without direction. The spell reacted immediately to torn tissue, damaged vessels, swelling, and fractured bone. Sieghart concentrated upon stabilizing everything first before encouraging the ribs to reconnect along their proper alignment.

Healing bones required more care than closing surface cuts. Joining fragments incorrectly could create additional problems later, so Sieghart maintained Magic Vision throughout the process while First Aid guided the physical reconstruction.

The explorer’s suspicious expression slowly disappeared as pain weakened. His breathing became deeper, his shoulders relaxed, and eventually he pressed one hand against his ribs without immediately grimacing. Sieghart dismissed the spell after confirming that the bones had stabilized properly and that nothing obvious remained damaged enough to require additional work.

“Try moving.”

The man twisted cautiously. Then farther. He took a deep breath before looking down at his own chest with visible disbelief, apparently expecting the pain to suddenly return once he stopped concentrating upon it.

“It’s gone.”

“Mostly.”

“How much?”

Sieghart considered the question for several seconds. Healing had cost him effectively nothing because his mana remained infinite, but charging nothing would immediately create a line long enough to consume the entire day.

“Five silver.”

The explorer blinked.

“For three ribs?”

“Yes.”

Sieghart almost increased the price. Too late again. The man handed over five silver coins immediately and started calling toward several companions before Sieghart had even placed the payment inside his lockbox.

That single healed customer changed the morning faster than another successful equipment sale ever could. Within half an hour, several wounded adventurers were waiting beside Sieghart’s carriage while others approached simply to ask what injuries he could handle. The economics made sense once Sieghart considered what ordinary explorers earned inside the dungeon. Killing only a couple of stone golems and recovering intact cores could already cover five silver coins without much difficulty.

Losing several days of dungeon work because of bruised ribs or a damaged ankle cost considerably more than paying Sieghart to repair the injury immediately. The second patient had a fractured wrist. The third had a shoulder partially pulled from its proper position after blocking a golem strike badly enough that the shield survived while his arm did not.

Another customer carried a long cut across one thigh where broken stone had entered beneath his armor, leaving damaged muscle that made every step noticeably uneven.

Sieghart treated them one after another while gradually developing a better rhythm for First Aid. Surface injuries required little attention, but joint damage and fractures forced him to control the spell far more carefully.

He deliberately avoided simply pouring greater quantities of mana into every wound. Infinite Mana made brute force tempting, but healing badly at enormous output could create mistakes considerably faster than healing badly with limited energy.

Instead, Sieghart concentrated upon efficiency and accuracy. Magic Vision showed damaged structures, First Aid encouraged reconstruction, and his growing understanding allowed him to direct the effect toward specific tissues rather than relying entirely upon the spell.

Coins accumulated steadily beside him. More importantly, White Magic responded. Each person gave Sieghart another opportunity to practice healing something different, and several injuries came directly from recent dungeon fights rather than ordinary accidents.

The System did not suddenly shower him with enormous White Magic progression merely because he charged five silver per patient, but Sieghart could feel First Aid becoming easier to control with repeated practical use. That was enough to confirm the business model worked.

By midday, Sieghart had stopped displaying most of his remaining merchandise because the healing line occupied nearly all his attention anyway. Someone eventually brought him a miner with a damaged knee who had been planning to remain outside the dungeon for almost a week before returning to work.

Sieghart repaired the torn ligaments carefully enough that the man could walk normally again within minutes, earning another five silver and considerably more advertising than he wanted.

“You should charge more.”

Sieghart looked toward the healed miner.

“I probably will.”

That answer made several people waiting nearby complain immediately, which Sieghart considered excellent evidence that the current price had been unnecessarily generous. Still, money was secondary to the real purpose. Healing provided useful practice during daylight, while the dungeon became significantly less crowded after most organized groups returned to camp before night.

Sieghart quickly developed a schedule.

During the day, he would sell whatever runic equipment he finished, treat injured explorers, gather information from customers, study Barrier Magic between appointments, and recover some of his recent expenses.

At night, he would enter the dungeon alone.

That arrangement solved several problems simultaneously. Nobody could watch his full spell arsenal easily, golem numbers remained high enough for continuous training, and Sieghart could experiment without worrying about another party wandering into the middle of his attacks.

The first night following his healing business, Sieghart returned underground with the Barrier Magic manual stored inside a waterproof satchel and spent several hours alternating between combat and theory. Barrier Magic looked deceptively similar to Mana Shield at first. Both created defensive structures from mana, and both required Sieghart to define a surface capable of resisting external force.

The difference became obvious once he studied the underlying principle more carefully. Mana Shield behaved like a summoned object, something Sieghart created and positioned as a discrete magical construct.

Barrier Magic treated space differently. The spell established a boundary.

Instead of creating something that merely occupied an area, Sieghart had to define a separation between one side and another, then reinforce that magical division strongly enough that outside force could not cross freely. That conceptual difference frustrated him for hours.

Whenever Sieghart imagined a wall too physically, the mana tried becoming another version of Mana Shield. Whenever he focused entirely upon resistance, the structure collapsed because nothing clearly defined where the defensive effect should begin or end.

Eventually, he stopped thinking about walls entirely. The better concept was permission. Everything behind this point belonged on one side. Everything attacking from ahead remained on the other. Until the spell broke, hostile force was not permitted to cross that boundary.

Sieghart liked that interpretation considerably more. It also felt appropriately stubborn. The first successful formation appeared inside a quiet side chamber where Sieghart positioned himself between two narrow stone walls and extended one hand toward the empty passage.

A transparent sheet of pale mana appeared several meters ahead, stretching from floor to ceiling before trembling violently and disappearing after less than two seconds.

Still, it had existed. That was progress. Sieghart spent the rest of the night rebuilding the structure, changing thickness, width, mana density, anchor points, and the amount of attention needed to maintain the boundary.

Testing became much easier once another stone golem wandered into the chamber. Sieghart positioned an unstable barrier across the passage. The golem charged. Its fist struck the transparent field. The entire barrier shattered immediately.

Sieghart stared.

He used Impulse to avoid the next strike, disabled the golem’s leg nodes with Water Jet, extracted its core, and returned to studying the spell with considerably greater motivation.

The failure had shown him another important difference between Protection and Barrier Magic. Protection spread force around something already defined by the caster’s body, whereas a barrier needed its own stable magical anchors.

Sieghart therefore stopped trying to hold the spell entirely through concentration. He imagined several fixed points around the barrier’s edges, each one locking the boundary into the surrounding space rather than allowing the entire structure to bend backward.

The next barrier survived one golem strike.

Then collapsed.

Better.

The third survived two. Sieghart smiled.

By the time morning approached, he could reliably create a transparent defensive plane strong enough to stop ordinary physical attacks briefly before accumulated damage destroyed it.

The next evening, he returned to a quiet testing area near the edge of camp and created the barrier again. This time, he imagined the carriage behind him.

His books. His tools. Everything he wanted kept intact while something outside tried reaching them. The mana changed immediately. A pale rectangular field appeared before him, considerably clearer and more stable than every previous attempt.

The System responded.

[WHITE MAGIC has developed a new branch.]

[Barrier Magic unlocked.]

[New Spell Learned: Mana Barrier — Level 1]

Sieghart immediately opened the spell information.

[Mana Barrier — Level 1]

Creates a defensive magical boundary that nullifies 20 points of incoming damage per spell level before breaking. Grants +2 Resistance per level.

Sieghart read the description several times before dismissing the System and examining the transparent barrier still standing several meters ahead.

Twenty points of damage at Level One was not enormous. That did not matter. The spell could level. At Level Ten, one barrier could absorb two hundred points. At Level Twenty, four hundred. And nothing in the description suggested he was limited to using only one during an entire fight.

Sieghart smiled.

“That’s more like it.”