No matter how hard Mercury thought about it did not make sense, he knew from the memories that the world was filled with ambient mana.
Mages had studies this for ages, unlike mana in living beings, ambient mana was both invisible and impossible to sense.
But for a brief moment when he used his spell, he was able to detect the ambient mana and not only that.
He was able to absorb it and filled back his mana pool. Unsatisfied he decided to try again.
After years of training, the previous Mercury no longer needed to chant to cast spells, Mercury leeched off his hard work.
His mana gathered above his palm forming a ball of fire, the fireball couldn’t be maintained for long.
He fired it off to the distance and cast another, this time he closed his eyes and concentrated.
As soon as his mana moved through his body and formed the fireball, trickles of mana were absorbed to fill his mana pool back up.
However that was not just it, he absorbed more mana than he used thus increasing his mana pool.
" How is this possible?" He might not be very knowledgeable about this world but his predecessor was.
Such a thing should be impossible, in fact he’s never even heard of it but Mercury was doing it.
’ Is it because I transmigrated or perhaps it’s because of the experiment? I can’t know for sure.
I still need to try and learn higher level spells to be sure the experiment worked the way it was meant to.
But my..his experiment should not be able to do this, is it a side effect maybe?’ Mercury couldn’t figure it out.
He spent the next half an hour casting spells and each time he increased his mana pool by a small margin.
His already large mana pool was getting larger but Mercury was focused on something else.
’ Can I absorb the mana without having to cast a spell first?’ he tried but nothing worked.
’ Perhaps I need a gap in my mana pool to absorb more mana.’ he cast another fireball and mana flowed into his body.
He tried to will his body to absorb more mana by trying to control the ambient mana as he would his own.
’ It’s working, it’s actually working.’ he absorbed mana like a horse drinking water, in less than a hour he doubled his mana pool.
His mana pool became so large it was starting to affect his surroundings, he gave off the aura of a savage beast.
Even he could feel it, ’ This is not good, I need a way to hide this aura of I’ll draw too much attention.’
He rushed back to his house and searched through the stack of magic items littering the floor.
He found a bracelet with a ruby stone, the stone was called a void mana stone, it was usually used on criminals.
It absorbed and suppressed mana making it hard to use spells and skills, it was one of the many things he used to try and suppress the curse.
Obviously it didn’t work, the stone was a low level void mana stone and couldn’t fully absorb all of his mana.
But it was able to suppress it to an acceptable level that wouldn’t draw attention.
For a moment he stopped practicing, ’ I need more void mana stone equipments, I also need need a way to deal with this curse.
Having a larger mana pool won’t matter if I can only use low level spells.’ Mercury understood how dangerous this world was.
There were other races beside the humans and they weren’t exactly getting along and at the top of those enemies were demons.
The other races weren’t friendly with humans but they weren’t at war either, the demons straight up hated humans.
For a good reason from Mercury understood from the memories of his predecessor, the humans worshiped the god of light.
The doctrine of the church of light was that humans stood above all races, honestly Mercury thought the other races were justified to hate humans.
Mercury took a cold bath and went to attend his class on magical theory, honestly he’s learnt all there was to learn.
Because he couldn’t use stronger spells, he never graduated beyond the first year class making a joke to the entire school.
Even his classmates who were much younger than him looked down on him because of it.
He had grown used to the disdainful gazes, the previous Mercury at least had, the stares still made him uncomfortable.
He ignored them and went to the back of the class, he sat there and listened to the teacher explaining the principles of magic.
Like how chanting was invented as a way to not only visualise the spells properly but lessen the mana expenditure of each spell use.
The longer the chant, the less mana needed to cast the spell and usually the stronger the spell as well.
Mercury already knew all of this, unfortunately it didn’t matter to him, his issue was more severe.
Spells were structured in very specific way, they weren’t just clumps of mana, they were mana given form.
Which is why he couldn’t just pour more mana into a low rank spell to make it stronger.
Like any structure, if your pour more mana into it, at some point the spell collapse on itself.
That wasn’t to say a lot rank spell couldn’t surpass its limits but that depended on who was using it.
Then there was the issue of mana output, each individual was limited in their mana output.
This can be increased by learning stronger spells or skills, once one reaches a certain level in spell casting or skill usage.
Weaker and lower ranked spells and skills can become stronger as a result, naturally their power would still be limited.
Take his father for example, the duke, from the memories of the dead Mercury, he can cast a fireball rivalling a C rank spell.
The duke was an S ranked mage but even he can only take a fireball to C rank and using it wasted too much mana.
Those who used such methods were those who were confident in their power as if saying look, I can defeat you without effort.
The class ended and the students left leaving him and the teacher alone. " Excuse me sir."
The teacher stopped but he looked annoyed, " What do you want?" He asked impatiently.
" I have a question, it is possible to increase one’s mana output without learning a stronger spell?" Mercury asked.
The teacher gave him a pitiful look, although impatient as an educator it was his duty to clear any confusion his students had.
" Not one I know of, if there is such a method you’ll find it in the library." Answered the teacher, he left before Mercury could ask anything else.