SSS Awakening: I am the First Legendary Mage

Every higher-ranked spell he unlocked would almost certainly demand more mana, and limiting that resource would only prevent him from making full use of his greatest advantage.

From that perspective, increasing Mana remained the best long-term investment.

That left him with a choice between safety and growth. Normally, Alex would never pick the riskier option simply because it looked more rewarding. This apocalypse was not a game where reckless decisions could be undone, and his death would not only affect him but also his family, whom he still intended to protect.

Even so, there was another reason he continued leaning toward Mana.

Ironically, it was the very reason increasing Constitution seemed so important in the first place.

His heart was already beginning to struggle because of the amount of mana it contained.

Ever since becoming a mage, his heart had become something completely different. It held enough mana for him to create a condensed mana sword with physical form, yet the mana inside the heart itself had never solidified.

Alex suspected the System had modified his heart when he chose the Mage Class, allowing it to safely contain an otherwise impossible amount of mana.

Still, he could tell that this had its limits. As his mana pool continued growing, there would eventually come a point where too much mana occupied too little space.

That mana would naturally become more compressed, and once it reached a certain level of compression, Alex believed it would begin turning into physical matter.

If something solid formed inside his heart, the outcome was obvious. No matter how durable his body became, that was not something he could survive.

Alex had already given that future limit a name in his mind: Mana Crystallization Threshold.

He believed every mage would eventually face the same problem if they continued increasing their Mana.

Raising Constitution might strengthen the heart and delay the process somewhat, but it would never eliminate the underlying issue. Eventually, every mage would stop increasing their Mana, or die after reaching the Mana Crystallization Threshold.

Alex found that conclusion difficult to accept. The System constantly encouraged people to become stronger, so it made little sense for mages to eventually reach a point where further growth became impossible.

There had to be a proper method for dealing with excess mana before it crystallized.

So far, he had thought of two possible solutions. The first was to remove the excess mana from his heart before it reached the threshold and compress it into rings surrounding the heart instead.

Those rings would serve as external mana storage, ensuring his heart never contained more mana than it could safely handle while still allowing him to draw upon that mana whenever he cast a spell.

Since his and every other mages mana recovery speed had barely increased since the beginning of the apocalypse, that solution seemed practical. The stored mana would still belong to him, and his regeneration would function exactly as before. The only difference would be where the mana was being stored.

Interestingly, the idea had not originated from Alex at all. Years ago, his friend Sophia had insisted he read several fantasy comics, or manhwas as she called them, where powerful mages formed mana rings or mana stars around their hearts.

At the time, he had dismissed the concept as nothing more than an interesting fictional power system.

Now, however, he could not help looking at it differently. Ever since dealing with the System, Alex had begun wondering whether the System had been subtly influencing Earth’s culture for decades before the apocalypse.

Humanity already understood concepts like dungeons, levels, classes, stats, and spells because they had existed in games, novels, and movies long before any of them became reality.

That naturally led to another question. If the System had influenced those ideas, then perhaps it had influenced others as well.

Maybe fantasy stories about Aura contained real principles warriors would one day discover, and perhaps those fictional mana rings were actually hints left behind for future mages.

It sounded like a ridiculous conspiracy theory, and Alex was fully aware of that. Even so, the idea refused to leave his mind because too many coincidences kept piling up.

If his theory was correct, then mana rings were not fiction at all but the standard solution mages in the Land of Origin used to overcome the Mana Crystallization Threshold.

Alex was fairly certain the first method—creating mana rings around his heart—would work.

He attempted it. He slowly moved his small amount of excess mana out of his heart and compressed it into a ring, and the process showed promising results.

Even so, he stopped before going any further because he did not intend to rely on that method unless he absolutely had to.

There was a second idea he wanted to test first. If it worked, it would not only prevent his heart from reaching the Mana Crystallization Threshold but also solve his stamina problem, at least until he could create a Life Element Rune.

Compared to mana rings, it had the potential to address two problems at once.

Alex took a slow breath and closed his eyes. Guiding his senses inward, he focused on the mana gathered inside his heart.

The mana inside his heart behaved ’strangely.’ It continuously soaked into the blood being pumped through the organ, yet it never left with the blood itself. Instead, it remained inside the heart as though his heart—or maybe he should call it Mana Heart now—was keeping it anchored there.

Alex took another deep breath before trying something different. He attempted to reinforce the blood cells leaving his heart through the arteries.

The mana fused into the blood cells, strengthening them as they flowed through his bloodstream.

At first, everything seemed to work exactly as he had hoped. The blood carried the mana throughout his body without any problems, but the issue appeared once it reached its destination.

By then, the mana had already been consumed by the blood cells, causing the reinforcement to disappear completely.

Continuously reinforcing every blood cell as it traveled through his body was technically possible, but the idea was impractical. The amount of concentration required would be overwhelming, and he doubted he would even be able to walk while maintaining something that demanding. Fighting monsters under those conditions would be completely impossible.

Instead, Alex changed his approach. Rather than adding only enough mana for the blood cells to carry temporarily, he gradually increased the amount, hoping some of it would still remain when they reached the rest of his body.

It took repeated adjustments, and each failed attempt forced him to refine the amount a little further.

Sweat slowly formed on his forehead as he continued experimenting. The process demanded patience, but Alex refused to rush it because a careless adjustment could ruin the entire attempt.

Little by little, he began getting closer to the balance he was looking for.

What he was really trying to reinforce was the energy carried by the blood itself. It was to increase his stamina. He had already experimented with reinforcing food after eating it, but that had failed, likely because food came from outside the body.

He had even tried strengthening his stomach after eating a snack back in the shop where everyone had rested after the first Wild Orc battle, hoping it would absorb significantly more nutrients, and give him more energy.

That experiment had only produced a minor improvement. His stomach digested food faster, and he believed it absorbed slightly more nutrients than before, but the effect was far too small to noticeably improve his stamina. It simply was not the solution he had been searching for.

Blood was different. Blood cells carried oxygen, and oxygen was ultimately responsible for producing energy throughout the body.

Although oxygen also came from outside, Alex found that once it had been processed by his lungs and entered his bloodstream, he could reinforce it with mana. He did not understand exactly where the line was drawn between something belonging to his body and something remaining external.

Perhaps oxygen only became part of him after passing through his lungs. Whatever the reason, it was enough for this experiment to continue.

Several moments later, the reinforced blood cells reached the rest of his body. A strange sensation spread through him almost immediately, making him feel as though he had just consumed an incredibly powerful energy drink.

His mind became noticeably clearer, his body felt refreshed, and every one of his senses sharpened.

At the same time, he felt a faint reinforcement spread naturally throughout his body. The effect surprisingly close to what his Level 10 Body Reinforcement Spell could achieve. It was not comparable to Advanced Body Reinforcement, but the reinforcement happened passively as the blood continued circulating.

That was the part that excited Alex the most. Body Reinforcement demanded constant concentration because he had to actively reinforce different muscles while adjusting the mana flowing through them.

This method only required him to reinforce the blood cells leaving the heart, after which they carried the effect throughout his body on their own.

A grin spread across his face. The spell offered both physical reinforcement and mental freshness while demanding only a fraction of the concentration Body Reinforcement required. Learning to distinguish individual blood cells with mana was difficult, but nothing he could not do, and maintaining the effect felt surprisingly easy.

He also had a confident feeling it would improve his stamina. The feeling was enough to convince him, though he still intended to verify it during actual combat before treating it as fact. Just then, a familiar notification appeared in front of him.

[Blood Vitalization Spell detected.]

[Would you like to learn Blood Vitalization Spell?]

[Yes/No.]

’Yes.’

..

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