Mana 6 Chapter 14 (Patreon)

When I awoke the next morning, Jonny was already up and moving around, making sure he had everything I’d need for the day.

I borrowed a set of more generic robes, and we headed over to the Leon family estate.

I had to admit that it felt weird marching into enemy territory, planning to work for them.

The place was grand, with an earthy tone to everything. Green and tan dominated their architecture, and the natural tones made it feel like it had just formed out of the ground.

The tan, earthy structures had green vines growing off of them in abundance, making the area we walked through more humid than the city we’d just left.

“Just wait here.” Jonny patted the air as he hurried ahead.

Steve tilted his head at me.

“Of course I’m going through with this.” I lowered my voice. “For the reasons discussed last night.”

Steve shrugged, neither approving nor disapproving. Steve was typically neutral, although he did care for us. But he’d always wanted a less conflict-heavy life, focused on growing his stable of mana beasts.

We stood there in comfortable silence for a while before Jonny came trotting back with a smile. “Derrick says they have a job for you.” He smugly put a hand to his chest. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I cultivated the art of words.”

Steve snorted, and we were all in agreement; Jonny was shameless.

But I had to admit that Jonny had a way of talking people into anything he wanted, even before he began cultivating.

As he walked, I followed, letting him lead me into the lion’s den.

There were enough high-ranking cultivators around that I knew if I was found out, I would likely be dead if I couldn’t flee in time. I just had to make sure they never got the chance to identify me.

A fat man with his arms crossed over his chest glared at us as we walked up, but then he beamed at Jonny. “Already bringing more. Maybe I should promote you.” He joked.

“Thanks.” Jonny scratched the back of his head. “This is Isaac, another from our mortal world. He’s strong. He’s even bested me on rare occasion during our spars.”

I coughed into my hand. “Pretty sure I won more often than not.”

Jonny pretended to not hear that.

“Yes, I see. Good cultivation. He’s a little higher than you in the fifth rank.”

The man scanning me was at the peak of the fifth rank. I worked to suppress my cultivation as he evaluated me.

“Thank you.” I bowed slightly.

“You will show him the ropes?” Derrick asked.

“Yes, sir.” Jonny nodded. “We’ll take him with us today.”

Derrick gave Jonny a big slimy grin, clearly thinking he was getting the better end of the deal and liking it. “Great, I’ll see you all this afternoon. Here’s today’s work order.”

Jonny took the folded up piece of paper. “You got it, boss.” Then he turned to Steve and I. “Come on. We got work to do.”

When we got out of earshot, I turned to Jonny. “You know you are never getting a promotion. That man expects to work you forever.”

“Of course. I’m stuck doing this. Unless, of course, Derrick dies a horrible death. But hey, we’ve got what we need at the moment.” He rubbed his hands together, making Steve roll his eyes and give me a ‘he is cheating them’ look.

“Wait, what exactly are you pulling here, Jonny?” I asked, but then stopped. I didn’t know what ears might be listening as we walked across the Leon Family estate.

But I also realized as we walked that we had rather unrestricted access, which could prove beneficial. There were family guards lingering around watching, but they didn’t make any moves to stop us as we walked.

Jonny lowered his voice. “They expect most of these weed mana beasts to destroy a certain number of herbs…” He grinned, and Steve’s expression explained the rest.

They were stealing valuable herbs from the Leon family.

“They don’t check your pockets?”

“Inventory is taken at the end of the day, but some loss is expected.” He shrugged. “Let’s see what we have today.” Opening the paper, he nodded several times before folding it back up.

And then he stopped walking. We had just arrived at a not so large greenhouse. “This is it?”

Even as I said that, I could feel the large pull of mana coming from the place, as it drained a significant quantity from its surroundings.

“It’s a spatial artifact; can’t you feel it?” Jonny encouraged me.

Sending deeper, I knew he was right. Not only was it a spatial artifact, but it was recycling the atmosphere inside. “I’ve never seen something like this.” The place was wrapped in incredibly complex enchantments, far more than any spatial artifact I’d seen before.

“Me neither, but these ancient families sure have a shit ton of amazing enchantments. I’d bet the other families have something like it, too. Did you see one in the Yunpi family?”

“No, but now I know what to look for. I’ll take a closer look around when I’m back.” I realized there would be more hidden wonders within the family than I expected.

Jonny pushed forward, opening the door and I was hit in the face with hot, humid air.

Beyond the door, it was an endless garden with a winding path through tropical plants. Behind us was a wall that quickly disappeared into the jungle and up above it was wide open air.

“Most herbs don’t love neat and tidy row farming.” Jonny said what I already knew. “So the greenhouse is built to simulate a real environment. Don’t kill the low level mana beasts.”

At that, a little bird squawked and jumped to another tree while looking down at us, tilting its head curiously.

It was a rank one mana beast. It was harmless to me. Even if I fell asleep and it attacked me, it wouldn’t be able to break my skin.

“I can do that.” I said, walking past the bird as my head swiveled, taking in everything. If it weren’t for the small section of a wall with the door in it, I would have thought this was a real jungle.

We continued through the greenhouse on the winding path. Groves appeared through the dense foliage, packed with rare herbs growing like weeds.

“Up ahead is our first job.” Jonny confirmed with the paper and took a left at a fork in the road.

“Just how big is this place?” I asked, not seeing the end as I tried to look past the treetops. It just seemed to go on forever.

Steve shrugged.

“Wait, you’ve never seen the end of this space?” I asked, surprised.

He shook his head. “But we’ve never traveled more than we could to return the same day.”

I wondered just what could be deeper.

“There are teams that take a week-long trip here.” Jonny commented over his shoulder. “So, keep that in mind. Deeper in are rarer herbs that likely cultivate for tens of thousands of years.”

Letting out a soft whistle, I understood. In the immortal world, cultivation like that wasn’t as rare, but it was still incredible.

Jonny stopped, and I nearly ran into his back. “Here we are.” He broke off the path and pushed through big green leaves.

I heard the mana beast before I saw it.

A low grumble echoed through the forest, and Jonny broke through to a grove. The area was filled with foot tall purple flowers. And in the center was another of those purple flowers, but this one had grown to be eight feet tall and now had a thorny green mouth that was chomping on a low level mana beast that it had caught.

“Okay. Steve, you distract it. Isaac, help me pluck some of these lovely flowers that are going to be ‘destroyed’ during the fight.” Jonny summoned three mana beasts at his side.

I’d seen his serpent and the peacock mana beasts before, but the mana beast who covered herself with nothing more than a few scant leaves was new. I wondered if she was a beast core from his work here.

Mimicking him, I brought out my mana beasts. “Keep your cultivation suppressed. We are simply picking flowers.”

“Can I make a little garden in my soul palace domain?” Mei asked excitedly as she saw the purple flowers.

“Sure, why not?” I had no issue with that; it might even be a boon.

Mei disappeared from the spot she was standing in and reappeared behind the flower, starting to carefully scoop a flower’s roots free of the earth.

The flower monster turned sharply at Mei’s presence, but a burning arrow stabbed into its stalk before it could do anything, causing it to whip back around at Steve.

Steve was off in a dash as the flower whipped vines about, spraying thorns at him. It was giving off the aura of a fifth rank mana beast.

Wind picked up around him and knocked the thorns off course, even as he started to run around, distracting the monster.

With it distracted, I dove in. But instead of physically picking up the flowers, I carefully expanded my domain under ground and took out large swaths of the herbs.

I trusted that Jonny had determined there wasn’t surveillance, so I felt comfortable using my domain for something so simple. I just had to keep my cultivation level down, since that could still be sensed at a distance.

It didn’t take long before we had cleared a ten-foot diameter around the monster. Finishing our first task, I focused on the monster, ready to complete our mission. It was becoming apparent that Steve wasn’t going to be able to take it on his own; the flower monster regenerated at incredible speeds.

“Yeah, they can be quite the pain. Thankfully, this one isn’t smart enough to realize it can probably uproot itself. Once they figure that out, they can be pretty tough.” Jonny withdrew his mana beasts and squared up against the plant, drawing out his false domain of light and dark mana. He had honed it in the mortal world and while it wasn’t a true domain, like a 6th rank immortal, it was still partially effective.

I drew a simple sword from my spatial ring, concentrating on the feeling of my sword intent and letting a little shine from the plain iron blade.

That moment was the perfect chance to hold back my cultivation and work on my sword.

The plant struck out with a pair of vines at both of us.

Jonny used his domain to absorb the blow, while I used my sword.

The sword bit into the stalk only briefly before a thorn rang out, hard as steel against my blade.

Unlike a human foe, its limb didn’t stop. Instead, it curled at an abnormal angle and tried to stab at me again.

I blocked again, letting sword intent bleed out of my attack and cut right through one of the hard thorns, severing the end of its limb.

The flow monster shrieked an unnatural sound. More limbs burst out of the surrounding ground like a flurry of whips as they crashed into the space where I’d been a moment earlier.

This time, I used Lumi’s lighting mana, running along the side of the beast, racing to its main stalk.

Hundreds of thorns pelted me as a defense mechanism, forcing me to use my sword intent to protect myself.

The beast blurred in front of me, and I began slicing thorns in two and diverting them off to the side.

My sword intent stretched my sword strokes masterfully, allowing me to catch thorns and reduce the number of strokes I needed to catch them all.

But I still panted with the sudden exertion.

“Is this thing getting bigger?” I frowned at the monster; it felt like it had grown another few feet.

“Umm, yeah.” Jonny hesitated. “I think it is.”

More stalks burst from the ground just in time to block a barrage of burning arrows from Steve, then they moved and blocked our view of the monster.

Looking up, I realized seed pods were starting to form high over our heads.

“Get back.” I warned both of them as I leapt back, slashing out with a wave of fire towards the pods.

But Jonny ignored my suggestion. He hurried to snatch up more herbs that would be destroyed in the next attack. He wasn’t careful this time, jerking the stalks out of the ground.

“Leave them.” I shouted, but it was too late.

The pods above opened up, spraying fist-sized seeds down onto Jonny.

My attack caught a number of them, and they exploded into fiery balls.

Activating Lumi’s lighting mana, I darted in, scooping up the last of the herbs and pulling Jonny away fast enough to get him to safety.

The seeds were like hundreds of little fire spells, washing the surrounding forest in fire.

Thankfully, everything was wet, so the fire didn’t spread far.

I waved the smoke out of my face as I waited for it to clear.

“Damn, there goes the whole grove.” Jonny cursed. “Do you realize how many herbs we could have stolen if we realized how powerful this thing was?”

“Aren’t you going to get canned for letting all of these get blown away?”

“Na.” Jonny shook his head. “They don’t care that much about herbs this close to the entrance. The potential destruction of this plant going wild here is what they are concerned about.”

“So we can loot more herbs?” I smiled.

Steve glared at both of us and pointed back to the flower monster going wild before us.

The stalks were merging back onto the main body, bulking it up into a humanoid shape.

“Let’s kill this one first.” I held my sword forward, sorely tempted to use my sixth rank cultivation. But I knew that it would spread too far, and there was likely someone from the Leon family within the structure.

We attacked together.

Darting forward, I used my sword intent and cut deep slashes in the enlarged flower monster, causing green fluid to flow freely from its body.

Jonny’s mixed elements blasted out his yinyang attacks, exploding with surprising force.

Meanwhile, Steve’s arrows provided much needed support from the back. When the beast tried to create pods again, they were met with burning arrows and exploded prematurely, only hurting itself.

We whittled it down, and Jonny cut the main stalk from the ground before taking out a large spear and stabbing it into the stump, detonating a powerful blast of mana.

He reached into the damage from the blast and pulled out a pulsing green mana core. “Damn, things are tough.”

“Why doesn’t the Leon family just have a stronger cultivator come through and clear this out?” I frowned, thinking about the situation critically. Something about this didn’t make sense.

“We’ve been told not to use any items that give the equivalent of a sixth rank attack. Apparently, it could potentially disrupt the spatial artifact.” Jonny said.

Steve added his own thoughts, making choking noises and holding his throat.

“Poison makes sense. With all the plant life, there have to be more than a few that adapt to poison. The Leon family doesn’t want to risk their own against these.” I agreed with Steve.

Poison flashed my thoughts back to Celina and the Bishou. I wondered if the herbs here had any connection. Maybe the Leon family paid the Bishou in poison herbs? The Leon Family certainly grew plenty of herbs and who knew what was deeper in the greenhouse?

“Come on. Let’s go find the next one.” Jonny dusted off his hands before he spotted a few flowers that had been damaged in the blast, but weren’t entirely useless.

It took a while to drag him away from searching the nearby area. Jonny kept muttering about the mana crystals he could get for each of the flowers.

Finding one in the wild might not be significant, but we walked away with several dozen, far more than Jonny and Steve were getting paid to clear the garden.

The rest of the monsters we encountered while fulfilling the orders we were given were far simpler, only being in the fourth rank. But Jonny let them smash up the ground enough to justify the herbs we were stealing.

It wasn’t until the sun was high in the sky that we took a break.

Jonny found a smooth rock that they had used before and took out a napkin-wrapped bundle of skewers.

“Your mother’s recipe?” I recognized the skewers. “I hope you don’t have that many stored in your spatial rings.” Though I wouldn’t put it past Mrs. H to make a few spatial ring fulls for Jonny.

“No,” Jonny grinned. “She finally approved of my mana beasts and taught Sylvia how to cook kebabs before we left.” There was a solemn tone in his voice.

I laughed, imagining Mrs. H Teaching the serpentine mana beast to cook. She would only have taught her recipe to somebody who was taking care of her precious son. She never was very good at letting Jonny go.

He did love her cooking; we all did. As I watched Jonny’s face, I realized where his mind had wandered.

His mother never managed to cultivate, which meant she would be in her seventies by that point. Even in a powerful sect, she couldn’t live forever. He’d easily outlive her, and after he left for the Immortal World, likely he’d never see her again.

Shit, this had practically been her goodbye.

“Now that I’m sixth rank, I should be able to travel back to the mortal world safely. We should go on a tour of our old haunts one of these days.”

“Totally.” Jonny smiled up at me, a spark of hope back in his eyes.

“Anyway, how much deeper are we going in this place?” I stole one kebab, and Jonny didn’t even bother stopping me.

Taking a bite, I moaned. They were almost as good as the ones his mother made, almost.

“Another hour or so in, then we’ll circle back through another path.” Jonny mumbled around the food.

I looked deeper into the greenhouse from where we sat, trying to sense with my cultivation, but nothing stood out to me.

But I had no doubt that deeper in, we’d find herbs that were even more valuable. And it would be tempting to spend extra time in the area, clearing out a few here or there. But they had to be looking for people looting their resources. I knew we had to be careful and not delay ourselves too long.

Coming under scrutiny wasn’t something that I needed right now.

“Sounds good.” I pulled out a few bowls of dumplings that Michelle had made for me and put them next to the kebabs for the group to share.

Steve picked from the food.

The thoughts of the food my wives made suddenly filled me with melancholy. I hated being away from them, not just for the simple pleasures, but because they truly made me happy.

After this was all done, I decided I should take the Yunpi up on their not-so-subtle offer of spending time relaxing in the family estate, assuming they would still have me. My mana beasts and wives were all looking for a moment of calm, and I’d try to give it to them if I could.

“Everything okay?” Steve spoke up.

“Yeah.” I clapped my hands and returned to finishing lunch so we could get moving again.

The sooner we finished our work, the sooner I could work on my broader plans.