Kairos and Tiana went back into the city, pretending that nothing had happened. They walked back to the center of the city without catching too much attention.
Once they got back to the center of the city, Kairos spoke up.
“Hey, don’t you think those people will be concerned once their scouting team doesn’t come back?”
Tiana rolled her eyes.
“There are countless things that could cause them to die in the apocalypse.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Then maybe we should’ve dealt with their corpses?”
Tiana shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not like you’re afraid of them, are you?”
Kairos sighed.
“The girl said there were about twenty D ranks, that’s a lot more than us.”
Tiana scoffed.
“That just means they have a bunch of idiots that ranked up way too early.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Both of us are also at the D rank.”
Tiana sighed.
“Well, I imagine you had your reasons, while for me there was no point in staying at a lower rank.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“…I suppose.”
Tiana chuckled.
“I never imagined you would be so scared.”
Kairos shook his head.
“I wouldn’t say scared, from how it looks like their little town isn’t sustainable.”
Tiana raised an eyebrow.
“What makes you say that?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“If they have that many at the D rank, I doubt that they have enough farmers to sustain themselves if it’s just two hundred people. There must be some sort of large food supply they have if they are sustainable for now, but I doubt it will remain that way soon.”
Tiana rolled her eyes.
“You sound so confident. What if they have some magical renewable food source?”
Kairos chuckled.
“Well, it sounds like the ruler of that place likes to rule by fear, but is also one that cares about appearances. Those kinds of people are the ones that are as shallow as it gets. Frankly, I doubt that kind of person has even thought about any of the long-term consequences of his actions.”
Tiana stared at him strangely.
“That is quite the conclusion to jump to with how little information you were given.”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Maybe…”
Tiana went back to her room, while Kairos did the same. Though, when he opened the door, he saw that Nicole was there again. She was fairly bruised, with a small frown on her face.
“U-Um, hi.”
Kairos nodded.
“Uh, hey. What’s wrong?”
Nicole scratched the back of her head.
“I… I’m sorry for being really bad at sneaking.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not like you’re a trained ninja, you still have to practice it.”
Nicole looked down at the ground.
“But still… I felt so incompetent. Both of you were able to see through me so easily.”
The corner of Kairos’ lip twitched. In reality, Nicole didn’t even do that bad of a job. Rather, the biggest problem was that Kairos could actually see the mana in her body, letting him find her, and Tiana had some strange mana tether that also let her know exactly where she was.
It was never a fair fight in the first place.
He deliberated over telling her, but decided not to in the end.
“It’s better that you fail when it doesn’t matter and get practice for when it does. The point is to learn new ways, you know?”
Nicole scratched her cheek.
“I… I guess.”
She still looked quite despondent, which made Kairos sigh.
“Since when did you care so much about these kinds of things anyway?”
A small smile formed on Nicole’s face.
“I-I just felt that you had quite high expectations and I couldn’t fulfill them.”
Kairos sighed.
“If that’s what you’re worried about, you should be working on improving yourself rather than sulking.”
Nicole blinked a few times.
“A-Ah! You’re right!”
She began to walk out. As she did, Kairos called out after her.
“Plus, it’s not like you’ve betrayed my expectations yet.”
Nicole snuck a glance backwards.
“R-Really?”
Kairos gave a small smile.
“Really.”
With that, Nicole straightened herself.
“O-Ok!”
Kairos then closed the door to his room and searched for a place for him to lie down. He shifted some things around and found a carpet. From there, he laid down with his face up.
“…I guess it’s time to get started.”
He was planning on finding a countermeasure to Tiana’s ability to take away all the mana around him. That was why he sent away Nicole.
As for the reason why he was laying down, he planned on extensively using his future vision, to the point he may be abusing it.
After all, if he did end up succeeding in reality, that may trigger Tiana in some way, possibly making her kill him. If she really wanted to kill him, it wouldn’t be that difficult with her current abilities.
He shook his head and focused.
“…First I have to check if I can even move mana outside my body.”
Kairos looked at a strand of mana that wasn’t attached to anything and tried to command it to move. Unfortunately, it didn’t even slightly work.
The side of his face twitched.
He did expect this possibility, but he couldn’t help but think that there was also some way if Tiana was able to do it so easily. Kairos clicked his tongue and continued to try.
He didn’t exactly know what he was supposed to do and felt like a child trying to activate telekinetic powers.
After a few moments, Kairos let out a defeated sigh.
He decided to try starting with what he could do, manipulating mana in his own body. From there, he began to casually circulate the mana in his body manually. Nothing really happened from it, but he found that his control over the mana in his own body was still quite rough.
It was as though he was trying to use a mouse that continually cut out every few seconds. While there was some semblance of control, he also regularly lost it. Nonetheless, Kairos continued to work at it, trying to figure out what exactly gave him the ability to move the mana in the first place.
It took him quite a while, but he eventually came to a realization. His heart was where mana pushed through the rest of his body. While focusing on there, he attempted to move the mana once more, and found that he had far more success in that aspect.
However, it still felt like something was missing.
Kairos thought back to how there was an excessive amount of mana in the head. There must be some reason for that. He guessed that being next to the brain was an advantage somehow. Perhaps because it was for commanding mana to the rest of his body.
Kairos focused on the mana in his head.
Though it was a little awkward to watch visually since it was technically behind his eyes, he could still tell that it was swirling underneath. Unlike the mana he controlled through the rest of his body, it was extremely easy to manipulate the ball of mana in his head.
From here, he decided to extend his future vision to two seconds in order to check what he could do by manipulating the mana within his head.
He did various experiments that were purely based on trial and error.
Kairos kept stopping himself from acting out his actions in reality. He wasn’t sure if he was just being overly cautious, but he figured that he might as well.
Most of his manipulations ended up doing nothing at all, but he did eventually come across something that seemed to work. He attempted to spin the mana within his head as fast as he could, making it revolve. It put even more burden on his mind as manipulating mana also seemed to be related to willpower.
However, with all of that struggle, the mana in the air seemed faintly attracted, but not enough to substantially matter. Despite only doing it for less than two seconds, Kairos doubted he would be able to rotate the mana in his head any faster.
However, he was still feeling a little better as he came across a lead.
It was very indirect, but he was able to manipulate the mana around him. It seemed that while it was very difficult to physically interact with mana, it would be substantially influenced by itself.
As Kairos came to this conclusion, he wondered if he could just cause all of the mana in his body to rotate like it did within his head, which should have a strong pull on the mana if his logic was correct.
Kairos extended his future vision to three seconds to test this.
Although it was a little rough in the first second, he caused all the mana in his body to rotate in a circular direction, which influenced all of the other mana strands. By the next second, he refined how the mana rotated, while the mana strands got closer.
In the third, he could feel the mana actually going into his body, though there was definitely a feeling of resistance.
Kairos quickly stopped himself from doing that in reality.
He let out a long sigh.
“…I accidentally stumbled across a pretty useful technique, but…”
A bitter smile formed on his face.
“If the mana is already extracted out of my body, then there’s nothing I can use to pull it back in.”
He lightly placed his palm onto his burning forehead and sighed.
This new discovery could completely change everything, as it meant he could speed up his own mana regeneration. The only problem was that it relied on mana already being in his body.
Against Tiana’s ability to directly extract all of the mana from one’s body, it was essentially useless.
Kairos wanted to continue experimenting to see if he could find another solution, but his head hurt too much at this point. He decided to go to bed instead.
This time, he did not have any dreams.
When he woke up, he looked out the window and saw that it was still in the middle of the day. He then began eating before preparing to continue working on learning mana manipulation, but then there was a knock on his door.
He went to answer it, assuming that it was Nicole, or maybe Tiana.
But to his surprise, it was Quinn.
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, you recovered from that headache?”
Quinn nodded.
“Well, the effects haven’t completely disappeared, but it’s essentially gone. You could consider it a hangover.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“I see. Well, there were things that I did originally want to talk to you about, but now my priorities have shifted.”
Quinn shrugged his shoulders.
“We could instead talk about whatever your new priority is.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Well, I was originally going to talk about the state of the city, but right now I’m more interested in manipulating mana.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow.
“I have no experience in mana, but perhaps we can still talk about it.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“…Well, I don’t really understand how to move mana properly, especially if it is outside of my body.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“But I recall seeing you cast spells before. You seem to understand it well enough.”
Kairos shook his head.
“Ranking up gives you the ability to cast spells, but it doesn’t teach you how to manipulate mana.”
Quinn blinked a few times.
“Huh. So like instinctively understanding how to walk, but unable to describe the exact muscle contractions in the process.”
Kairos nodded.
“More or less, yeah.”
Quinn tapped his chin a few times.
“Hmm… perhaps you can try to explain what you know about it, and I can try my best to figure something out.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“…I guess there’s nothing to lose. For starters, there are the spell diagrams there.”