His battle with the lion lasted hours, the forest was devastated for hundreds of metres.
Trees were broken and some burnt to ashes, craters covered the ground, some still red from the flames.
It looked as if two armies had clashed here but considering the peak of power in this world.
Their fight might as well have been a playdate for toddlers. That didn’t bother Mercury.
He knew as long as his mental strength kept growing, one day he would have the strength to challenge the strongest in the world.
Especially considering he went from being stuck at F rank spells to casting multiple E rank bolts in less than 2 months.
Such progression speed would be considered genius anywhere he went, if you don’t count the years he spent on F rank.
Mercury looked down at the giant lion beneath his feet, its entire body was covered in frost.
Although the land was devastated as if multiple bombs had gone off, there was not a scratch on his body.
" Perhaps my mana skin is too tough, I need to weaken it a little if I want to test myself but I’m not doing that." Mercury shrugged.
" So what if my close combat ability sucks, I’m a mage, I’ll just blast everything away from the distance."
As somebody from modern earth, Mercury was not used to fighting and he was scared of getting hurt.
He would rather avoid it if he could but a part of him was also influenced by the memories of the previous Mercury.
That guy was a daredevil who didn’t fear pain in the slightest, this created a weird contrast.
Sometimes Mercury felt taking risks was fine and good for his progress as seen by him choosing to engage the lion head on.
While another part of him told him doing that was just plain stupidity, this time, the more reasonable side won.
Mercury flew back to his stone house to continue his training, his intention was to get mana skin to at least D rank in terms of power.
Doing that was easier said than done but Mercury was determined, he stopped wasting his time on fighting monsters.
He spent his days training to increase the amount of mana his brain can handle but there were things Mercury did not fully understand.
" Since I can create so many mana bolts at once, obviously the issue is not the amount of mana I can handle.
However when I try to use that same amount of mana on one bolts it feels like I’m trying to hold a crumbling mountain together why?"
Although his magical theory was not lacking for somebody his age, this question wasn’t one he had an answer to.
" I can’t ask the teachers, those idiots might not have the answer and even if they do I doubt they’ll tell me.
Perhaps I could ask mother, no, that would mean having to see father and I really don’t want to see that man."
Mercury didn’t realise he was talking about them as if they were his biological parents, even his feelings for them reflected those of the previous Mercury.
Days went by, Mercury operated with the same routine, hunt for food in the morning, train all day, cultivate at night and sleep.
Mercury had put on five more rings, a ring on each finger, this dropped his mana pool by dozens of times.
It also placed a massive strain on his mental strength, to the point he could barely maintain 50 F rank bolts at once.
Naturally that was only when he had his E rank mana skin on, when he removed the mana skin, he could hold many more F rank bolts.
As for E rank bolts, when his mana skin was on, he could only make at a time, just like that two weeks went by.
Two weeks into the second month, Mercury finally managed to make 6 E rank bolts at the same time while having 10 rings on.
However holding them was not so easy, " In battle, making 2 would be more advisable otherwise I might lose control of them.
I wonder how strong my mental strength is without the rings." He grew curious and took off the rings.
When he removed the fith ring, a faint blue aura surrounded his body, the ground beneath his feet cracked.
Mercury tried to contain it to no avail, his mana had grown so dense it effected his surroundings without his control.
He continued removing more rings and the more he took off the worse it got, his stone house cracked from the pressure.
Wind howled around him, trees within a hundred metres radius shook and bent as they’ll break.
The cracks on the ground spread like a spiderweb, Mercury took out the last ring and a wave of mana blasted out.
It was so dense it looked like giant blue flames were surrounding Mercury’s body, unfortunately he has no control over this mana.
Unlike his mana skin or bolts, it wasn’t physical and provided no defence whatsoever.
At most it could place a tremendous pressure on his opponents and act as intimidation.
" If I could gain control of all this mana, if I formed a mana skin using so much mana, I doubt anybody would be strong enough to even harm me."
Mercury tried to form a mana skin and in a blink of an eye, a layer of jelly like blue mana surrounded his body.
The layer of mana was around 5 cm thick and wobbled like jelly, Mercury put the rings back on but left two out.
Even with eight rings on he was able to easily maintain this new upgraded mana skin, if it can even be called that.
He used the colour change spell but changed it a bit, instead of reflecting the colour of his skin and clothes.
He removed the colour of the mana skin itself and was left with with a transparent jelly around himself.
He sighed, " I guess I can’t hide the D rank mana skin, the mana is too thick, I’ll have to use it only when in battle."
That was a bummer, he was afraid of being sneaked up on, his body was too weak and an E rank mana skin wouldn’t do anything.
" I’ll have to keep the mana realm active to make I’m not caught off guard, with my current mental strength." Mana realm is what he called his domain of mana.
" My processing speed should be fast enough for me to react to anything D rank and below, anything higher would kill me either way so that doesn’t matter.
Alright, now let see how many D rank bolts I can form at once while keeping a D rank mana skin active."