Puppeteer of the DanMachi World: Chapter 29

Riveria asked.

"With my magic power, the twelfth floor is already my limit. Going any deeper would make the mana consumption too dangerous."

Ming Ge shook his head.

"Want to form a party?"

Hearing Ming Ge's words, Riveria's eyes lit up. She quickly said, "Of course. I mean no harm."

"I know. The Loki Familia's Nine Demon Princess can be trusted."

Ming Ge smiled. "You're actually the first professional mage I've met. Talking with you might inspire some new ideas."

Riveria had far too many questions for Ming Ge, while Ming Ge's words were more about safety. He wanted to take a look at the deeper floors.

Secret protection was ultimately still secret. If something unexpected happened and caused too much mana to be consumed, they would be left in a difficult situation.

Chapter 22: Young Dragon

"What do you think mana is?"

The twelfth floor was also the final floor classified as part of the upper levels.

Because Uranus used divine prayers to suppress the Dungeon's will.

Here, closest to the altar, the Dungeon was far less active, and there was no floor boss.

With their strength, these floors posed basically no danger.

"A force capable of causing supernatural phenomena."

Riveria pondered for a moment before finally giving the answer accepted by the general public.

"Is that so?"

Ming Ge chuckled, then gathered mana in his hand.

To Riveria's senses, the initially ethereal mana gradually solidified, eventually forming several round mana shells.

With a bang, the mana shells fired, killing the Poison Moths flying toward them.

The monsters turned to ash, and magic stones fell to the ground.

Ming Ge merely crooked a finger, and his mana became an invisible hand that delivered the magic stones before him.

"This is... pure mana?"

Riveria revealed a stunned expression.

Mana was a form of energy, while magic was the supernatural phenomenon caused by that energy. That had always been Riveria's understanding.

But she—or rather, the people of this world—had overlooked one point.

"You're right. Mana is a force that causes supernatural phenomena, but you've overlooked something as well."

"Mana itself is also a supernatural phenomenon."

Ming Ge chuckled. "Chants aren't necessary. What truly matters is the magical effect."

"Train mana directly and improve your control over it. That way, you can ignore chants and still produce the phenomenon."

In a sense, chants were equivalent to hand seals in Naruto.

Without that most crucial link, innate magic could not develop.

For adventurers, they could only use magic if their magic slots contained magic.

In other words, adventurers treated magic as a powerful weapon and never seriously considered its essence.

For magic races, only fixed chants allowed them to cast magic with magical effects.

Even professional mages could not escape this concept during practice.

But for Ming Ge, who came from another world, the ritual—or the qualitative transformation of mental power, Mind, gained by becoming an adventurer—was itself a supernatural power.

What this world had overlooked was precisely the most important foundation of innate magic: mana control.

"Mana control..." Riveria fell into thought.

Mana control was a new concept in this world, because even magic races at most trained control over their magic.

Both could train control, but their essence was different.

Mana control was more fundamental and more efficient.

"A monster is coming. Is that... a dragon?"

Ming Ge looked at the young dragon emerging from the tunnel ahead, his eyes gleaming with interest.

It stood only one and a half meters tall, but its body was over four meters long.

It had a large expanse of amber scales, a long tail, sharp claws, and countless teeth.

This was a young dragon. Though it had no wings, one look at its tough body wrapped in hard scales was enough to tell that it possessed far greater potential than an orc.

Young dragons appeared on the eleventh and twelfth floors. They were rare monsters with low overall numbers, usually only four or five on each floor.

No matter the world, whether they were defined as good or evil, dragons were symbols of power.

Even the weakest young dragon was effectively the floor boss of the twelfth floor, which had no actual floor boss. One alone was enough to wipe out an entire group of novice adventurers.

Wind Blade Origin Slash.

Ming Ge formed three Blade Origin Slashes and sent them rushing toward the young dragon.

Unlike before, Ming Ge's attack encountered obvious resistance this time.

When the blades swept across the monster's scales, a crisp metallic clang rang out. Though they could cut through its defenses, they only left several somewhat deeper wounds.

"Can't kill it in one blow?"

Ming Ge muttered, then controlled the Wind Blade Origin Slashes as they continuously moved across the monster's body.

In merely three seconds, the entire young dragon was cut into eight pieces, though the mana consumption was also intense.

With the quality of Ming Ge's mana, being able to achieve this much was already equivalent to challenging an enemy two levels above him.