Son Of Chaos - Chapter 184 Mana Mesh

The next morning after waking up, the first thing Ivan did was stretch and feeling out the state of his injuries. As he had expected they had completely healed and he was now once again in a good enough shape to fight.

So after eating a light breakfast he once again moved towards the direction where he had met that lizard yesterday. This time, not only did he pay extreme attention towards his surroundings, but he also spread out his senses in an attempt to find the beast, before it could attack him.

And his wariness paid out. This time he wasn’t surprised by the appearance of the lizard since he managed to sense it in time. But he also didn’t manage to sense it early enough to prepare a counterattack towards it as soon as it would appear. So in the end, not much had changed and he still got tossed around by it once again. The only difference was that he managed to lessen the impact from the lizard’s hits, resulting in much lighter damage than before.

The thing that created the largest problem for him was the tail, since it was fast and strong, making it hard to evade or parry it. He currently also didn’t have any viable option of blocking it. The magic shield he tried to use was easily broken by the powerful swing of the tail. If only the shield wasn’t that rigid. Maybe if it was more flexible he could absorb more of the force of the swing with it?

But now wasn’t the time to experiment. Instead, he fully focused on trying to evade the attacks as much as possible while migrating as much force as possible with his shields.

But once again he had to rely on Vlada to escape when he had been beaten down.

After having arrived at his camping place he then spent time recovering from his wounds as well as recuperating his mana. Then he started to experiment on his idea of a more flexible shield, which he had gotten during the fight.

“Hm, how should I make it flexible?”, he asked himself. He didn’t have a good idea of how to start with his development of a flexible shield. He also hadn’t read about something like this anywhere. The spells for shields he had seen until now all empathized the strength and sturdiness of the shields.

“How about I copy something?” This was the first thought that appeared in his mind. It was a common start for spells. Look at something in reality and then transfer the knowledge and design into magic.

But in reality, he also hadn’t seen any flexible shields. But there was something similar in the form of armor. Both things would provide protection against attacks. But while shields were distanced from the person wearing them, armor would be located close to the body. There was hard armor such as plate armor and softer armor made with leather or cloth.

He had no idea what structure leather had and while it was possible to study it with his senses and the available leather he had, it would use up a lot of time. This only left the option of cloth. Cloth generally had a simpler and cleaner structure than leather. He also had a rough idea of how to reproduce something similar. He would use the magic strings Celine had taught them about and use it to weave a mana based cloth. He could then use multiple layers to transform the energy from the attacks to heat energy and block the attack or at least cushion it.

Having found a rough direction on how to develop his new spell he didn’t hesitate to get started with it. First, he had to create the mana strings. Something that as he found out was much more difficult than expected. Forming just one that had a uniform thickness that was thin enough was already hard. But what he needed were thousands of them. And to make it work well, all of them would have to have a perfect form.

For now, he was only able to form around ten of them, each of which was shaped differently. He just wasn’t able to make them shaped the same. Instead, some were thicker while others were thinner but none of them was uniform. But for now, that was what he had to work with.

With such a low number of mana strings, he was only able to make a rough mesh out of them, by weaving them together. Although this mesh had large holes in it, it should be suitable for blocking the blunt attacks by the lizard’s tail. But only blunt attacks. It had completely no resistive properties against stabbing attacks.

After he had created the best mesh he was currently capable of he used a function of the system which was highly valued by spell developers. It was the ability to save a blueprint of mana structures. One could buy the blueprint slots from the system by spending some gold and he had done so for one slot.

While he had developed the spell, the time had passed and it was already time to rest, so he would be fit for fighting the next day.

The next morning he once again went out to fight against the lizard.

This time not only didn’t he get surprised by it, but he also managed to use his new mana mesh to withstand the force of the lizard tail. Although he said he withstood it, in truth he was only able to absorb part of it with the mesh which would deform under the force and absorb a lot of them before being pushed against his body, transferring the leftover force to him. This force wasn’t enough to throw him through the air but it still fucking hurt.

The mesh didn’t help him fight longer or even go against the lizard and counterattack it. It even shortened the time since his mana soon ran out. But the great thing was that when he called for Vlada to escape from the fight he wasn’t heavily injured like the days before.

Once back at the camp, he ate, improved his spell and then rested. This way the days passed, each of them spent just like this. Slowly he improved in fighting against the lizard. Now he sometimes managed to counterattack and he had once even managed to hurt the lizard with one of his sword strikes.

But not only had his fighting capabilities grown but also his mana manipulation ability. In fact, his skill ‘Mana Manipulation’ had reached level 24.

And while he had improved, the same could be said about the lizard. Its attacks had gotten increasingly tricky and powerful. It wasn’t just Ivan using it to train but it also used Ivan to train.

Today was the last day Ivan would be able to fight against the lizard. Tomorrow he would have to start going back home. Although he hadn’t finished what he had planned, which was to improve his pets, he sure had managed to improve himself. And not only he had improved but also Vlada who had gone out to train as well, whenever he had been at the camp training his mana mesh spell.

Today he stood in front of the lizard for the last time. “Hey, I’ll have to say goodbye today. Tomorrow I’ll have to leave and go back.”, he didn’t know why, but lately, he had started to talk to his opponent. Maybe it was because he had been out in the wild for so long and he wasn’t used to it yet.

In response to his sentence, the lizard lifted his front paw and waved it towards him. In his mind, this meant that he should stop spewing nonsense and that he should attack. This wasn’t the first time this happened. In fact, he had more and more got the feeling that the lizard was very intelligent and he even seemed to understand human language.

Once again the two of them clashed. And once again he lost. But this time the lizard stopped before defeating him completely. Usually, this was the point of the fight, where Ivan would call for Vlada to stoop in and take him away. But this time was different. Since the lizard had stopped its attacks on him, he didn’t see a reason to call Vlada.

Moreover, it seemed as if the lizard wanted something from him. Or it wouldn’t have stopped its attacks and instead continue on like every time before.