Elemental Cats

After finishing the deal with Toz, hassandra spared no time in getting him to help her. The first thing that they needed to agree on was whether to devise an effective countermeasure against the ability Toz called 'mana vision' or if they should figure out a way to make it so that mana vision or similar abilities couldn't see her strings.

Devising a countermeasure was more like coming up with a plan of action for an occasion where Hassandra knowingly or unknowingly encountered a person that could do what Toz did. It could be changing the way she moved her strings or whatever. It might be the easier option, but it was also the weaker one since there would probably be a limit to what that kind of preparation could accomplish.

However, improving Hassandra's magic would change and strengthen the strings on a more fundamental level, which would be better for her long-term development, even if it might be more challenging to do.

Hassandra naturally wanted Toz's help in coming up with a way to make her strings undetectable, no matter what. But she didn't quite dare ask Toz since she was already relying on his kindness by delaying her payment.

Thankfully for Hassandra, Toz didn't have any intentions of doing the bare minimum, and Hassandra didn't have to ask him for help with how to develop her magic so that his mana vision didn't see her strings.

But there were two things they needed to clarify before they could proceed. How Hassandra's magic worked, and how mana vision saw the invisible wire.

Since the workings of a human's inclination could be the foundation of their strength, revealing that would easily expose weaknesses in that human's fighting strength. If Hassandra didn't want to tell Toz how her inclination worked, he would be more than understanding, especially since it didn't seem like her magic was ordinary.

Toz's inclination wasn't anything truly special. Even if he revealed how it worked, it wouldn't expose any weaknesses in his combat. All it would do is reveal how he becomes stronger.

However, Hassandra decided to take the plunge and trust Toz as she willingly explained what her inclination did.

The fact that her inclination was of the mundane type didn't surprise Toz since she handled rope and string. Though, the fact that a mundane type inclination could produce string capable of working against mana was a little out of the ordinary.

After expressing his passing curiosity, Hassandra didn't hesitate to tell him that it wasn't originally capable of that. It was a consequence of a dramatic event in her childhood. That event had changed her inclination from creating and controlling a single rope to a rope and a string with varied properties.

Hassandra's inclination had originally been a single, sturdy, neutral attribute rope that she could use and control however she liked. But after that event, she got her string that she could turn invisible and use against mana and magic and the thick and sturdy rope that couldn't interact with mana at all. It couldn't even block it.

The string only worked against people and beasts when they strengthened themselves with mana. Otherwise, it was completely ineffective. And the sturdy rope only worked against physical matter. The invisibility aspect of the string was due to how people use their physical eyes and senses to perceive things. And since it cuts through mana, mana-based senses can't pick it up either, which should make the string invisible and undetectable. But mages with stronger mana than Hassandra can still sense it.

However, Toz, despite not having stronger or mana of greater quality, could still identify Hassandra's supposedly undetectable string, all thanks to his mana vision. That part was a conundrum, especially. Toz's mana vision let him see mana, so how could he use it to identify Hassandra's string that was practically the opposite of mana?

Although it was technically made of mana, it was in a way that reflected outside mana and concentrated the string's mana within. It should be impossible to perceive or see the mana that made the string, and until Toz could confirm whether or not that was what he was doing, he and Hassandra continued experimenting.

Since they were still in the middle of the battlefield and could be attacked from anywhere at any time, Toz and Hassandra didn't go overboard. But thanks to the other Lightning Rascals' understanding and the cats' help, Toz and Hassandra could still focus most of their attention on what they were doing.

Even when demonic beasts attacked them, Toz and Hassandra could still focus on trying to figure out how Toz's mana vision caught Hassandra's strings. With the three other members of the Lightning Rascals squad working with the cats, their attackers had to be quite formidable to make Toz and Hassandra move as well.

Though, there were times when Toz and Hassandra had to take a break to watch over the two hostages when the others were swarmed with a veritable ocean of goats. But Nil had already recovered at that time. The five cats and the three Lightning Rascals formed a powerful team as they worked together.

However, there did seem to be some dissatisfaction from Kaler and Hullie's end since Hassandra and Toz still hadn't made any progress, despite all their preferential treatment.

But, thankfully, they made some progress before that dissatisfaction grew.

Toz gained a flash of inspiration while watching Asilean sleep and realized that he wasn't looking at Hassandra's strings. He saw the emptiness they created in the mana. Since they couldn't exist in the same space as the mana around them, it looked like there was a string-shaped mana-empty gap in the air.

What Toz thought was the string was actually the absence of mana where the string was.

Hassandra was relieved to know that Toz wasn't really seeing her string since it affirmed her confidence in its abilities, but it still didn't change the fact that the results of what he was doing weren't very different.