One Last System

'I guess I could easily topple them right now,' I thought, raising my eyes at the body of the only enemy standing in the area.

I knew that there had to be others hidden somewhere. Yet, my mana sense couldn't pick the darnest thing.

In theory, it was possible for someone to render this sense of mine useless... But as I watched the extremely slow pace at which the body of my enemy moved...

I couldn't help but doubt it.

My mana sense wasn't tuned or even aimed at perceiving other beings, be it beasts, monsters, or humans. No, this quasi-ability of mine was far simpler.

Realistically speaking, all my mana sense allowed me was to sense the ongoing flow of the natural mana around me. That's it. Nothing more.

But at the same time, nothing less.

'I can feel this guy moving,' I thought, easily producing a simulation of what was going on in my mind.

If the flux of mana in the air could be seen, it would look like a massive, calm pond spreading in every direction in a global ocean. And just like with an ocean, there were areas of greater depth. There were areas where currents of mana passed, disturbing the otherwise peaceful flow.

It was an insanely complex picture, yet, in a certain way, it was also extremely simple.

And right now, I could feel a singular source of unnatural ripples within the world of mana and mana alone.

'This guy's speed is pathetic,' I thought, squinting my eyes as they followed after the man's silhouette.

Due to the fact of how slow he was moving, I could take a long, careful look at the man's face. And to no surprise, the man's eyes were filled with terror.

'Let's wrap it up,' I thought, taking a step forward.

Tsss...

I stopped my leg as soon as I noticed that something was wrong. A strange kind of heat would form whenever I as much as twitched, leaving the air to sizzle away under such a massive surge in heat.

'What the hell?' I thought, attempting to turn my head around to look at the situation behind my back. Yet, even turning my head around proved to cause the same phenomena, thus making it impossible to actually look at it.

'How about this?' I thought, turning my eyes back to their former position before slowly waving my hand in the air.

And at first, no problems came. As long as I made my movements as slow as possible, I could move. The trouble started once I attempted to move in the same way I would in a normal situation.

Then, wherever my body would pass, a sudden explosion of heat would ensue.

'It's like I'm tearing apart the fabric of the world, only for its natural forces to fight back to close the rift,' I thought, watching the small explosions of heat following the movement of my hand.

And then, I moved my eyes back to the flying silhouette of my opponent.

'I wasted enough time,' I decided, controlling the speed of my movements as I turned towards the man and started my approach.

I walked at a seemingly slow, super slow pace. Yet, within this strange, dense world that my consciousness found itself in, catching up to the man wasn't a challenge, to begin with.

And so I grabbed the man by his throat only to then stand my ground.

'Let's see if I can free myself from this world,' I thought, closing my eyes when I focused on limiting the flow of mana into my formations.

'No, this won't work,' I realized a mere moment later.

Right now, my power came from the extremely delicate state of balance where a part of my energy would be there just to call forth even more of it. And as this process continued to roll for a long while already, the amount of energy I had invested both into my formations and into my cultivation...

It was several times too much for me to ever hope to control on my own. And even though I could somewhat use most of this power...

'I guess I better not test it out just yet,' I thought, aware of the difference between my current ability and the power I wielded within my mage's tower.

'I guess I will need to train my body to infuse the mana engine process into the current cultivation paradigm,' I thought, slowly formulating a plan for the future development.

I then shook my head, causing a new array of heat explosions to surround my head.

'Anyway, I need to tune it down. And since changing the flow of my mana right now is nigh impossible...' I racked my brains in search of an answer.

The solution to my problem appeared to be just too simple to be true, thus making me hesitant to believe in its potential.

'I guess I have no other choice,' I decided when two more attempts at cutting the flow from my cultivation to the mage's tower ended up as huge failures.

I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the internal sea of my mana. The one place that only my consciousness had access to.

'There it is.' A small smile crept up on my lips when I located the structure that naturally formed right at the place where my cultivation connected with the rest of my mage's tower.

It wasn't a physical object of any sort. It was simply a place where the flow from my cultivation turned into a current of mana, seeping out of my ankle only to then seep into the formation stones of the first ring of arrays around me.

'I will also need to improve those formations,' I thought, watching how the formation stones started to slowly crack under the immense pressure.

'From rearranging the project to include a bit more reinforcement to the structure itself, I could also specialize the outer layers more,' I thought as the geeky side of my soul moved to the surface of my consciousness.

However, as fun, as it was to think over the details of my next projects, right now, I had something else to do.

So I knelt down on one knee, leaning over the place where my mana would use its own energy just to push the natural mana out of its stable state and thus ignite its true potential.

And without any hesitation, I squeezed the mana construct with my mental hand, squeezing all the juices out of it.

The balance was now broken. Squeezed out, the restricted spell could no longer keep up, producing the necessary momentum to keep my current mana situation stable.

A tornado of magic momentarily formed above my head, only for the part of mana that I could no longer control to enter it only to then slingshot somewhere far away.

Bit by bit, I shaved away more and more of my engine-sourced power. And as I continued to do so, the time around me also started to pick up its usual pace.

'That's enough,' I thought when the time reached half of its usual speed. And all of that for a simple reason.

'I guess that was only to be expected,' I thought as I looked at the severed head of the man in my hand.

He never ever got to see this attack. The attack that I orchestrated was just a restraint, yet before I noticed, it turned into a guillotine.

'Since momentum speed times the weight and speed itself is a function of time...' I thought, the corners of my lips quivering.

Even though I was supposed to be in a middle of a fight, I was currently reaching new heights, both by learning more about the mana itself but also by slowly growing more used to operating large amounts of it at once!

"I can't wait to get Mia to praise me," I muttered happily as I let go of the severed head from my head. 'Or I could go and clean all the others,' I thought, stopping right as I was about to make a steep and then looking out towards the distance.

'Yeah, I guess I will do that,' I thought, finally squeezing the mana transformation speel within my soul, fully returning back to the same reality others had to operate within.

And then, a small crack suddenly appeared behind my back.

I turned around...

And black lightning came out of nowhere, striking down against the groud and blasting me away with the ensuing shockwave.