The Foolhardies 15 Secret of Mana

It's why I couldn't say anything in my defense while Darah scrutinized me with a quivering look that made my feet turn to jelly.

However, despite my silence, both Aura and Luca came to my rescue. They each gave Darah an accounting of how wisely I led the unit with no prompting from her.

Now, it was one thing for Aura, who was the clan's princess, to speak out loud, but Luca, who was a slave soldier, showed incredible nerve by directly addressing one of the four leaders of the clan's military without so much as a bow. I was afraid this would get him in trouble, but Darah didn't seem to mind.

She looked from Luca to Aura, before turning back to me with an eyebrow raised. "Loyalty can be a measurement for the competence of a leader... perhaps you have potential, Dean Dapper."

"Y-you know who I am, general?" I asked, surprised.

"I take great interest in Aurana's wellbeing," she laughed, and then she pinched Aura's cheeks like a doting aunt, making Aura blush. "When she contracted for the very first time, I was very curious to know what kind of man would interest her to do so."

I glanced at Aura who kept her eyes down. Her cheeks were tomato red though.

"And here I find a boy barely out of his... tweens," Darah raised my chin as if to inspect my face. "What do you think, Roger?"

Commander Thors' brown eyes gazed back at me. His face was unreadable.

"He did defeat Azuma," Commander Thors answered.

"Pssh, that battle obsessed neanderthal isn't anything special. You beat him too, didn't you?" Darah fired back at him as she pulled her hand away from my face.

"With some difficulty," Commander Thors admitted. Then he gave me a warm smile that softened the rugged features on his face. "I heard you went toe-to-toe with him. How was it?"

His welcoming smile sent a surge of confidence in me enough to reply, "Like I would die if I made one mistake..."

Commander Thor's face turned serious again. "I think he has potential, general."

"Pssh, you're too soft on your fellow humans," Throughout this whole conversation, Darah's eyes never left mine. "Besides, you fought Azuma but couldn't kill him?"

"That's because—"

Aura had started to explain but Darah raised a hand to silence her like she was saying it wasn't Aura's job to answer for me.

Inwardly, I wondered what the right answer was. Should I have just explained that Azuma was basically an unkillable zombie? But wouldn't that just sound like an excuse? I opted instead to tell Great Commander Darah how I really felt. "I wasn't strong enough to give him a deathblow, General."

"But, Dean—"

This time it was Luca who wanted to explain, but I shook my head to stop him.

I gazed back into Great General Darah's eyes with all the conviction I could muster despite having to lean on my brother to hold me up. "I'll defeat him for sure next time."

She narrowed her eyes at me, but I held her gaze without blinking because it felt like staring into the face of a hungry lioness, and if I turned away those sharp eyes would devour me.

"You have courage, Dean Dapper... and from how you led our soldiers tonight, you might even have a brain," Darah placed a hand on my shoulder. The one Luca held onto. "At least you didn't give me the same excuse Roger did last time he let Azuma escape his grasp."

Darah glanced mockingly at Commander Thors whose face remained impassive.

"I'm not sure even you could kill an immortal, general," he responded nonchalantly.

"All the true immortals are dead, Roger," Darah's face turned contemplative. "There's a trick to it, but I guarantee you it isn't because he can't die... the Magesong clan's not that powerful they could dole out such a fairy gift."

"A trick... aunt Darah?" Aura asked, her curiosity mirroring mine.

"There's always a reason for something occurring, Aurana. this so-called immortality is just the trick that veils this truth," Darah explained like she was giving a lecture to a class.

Her hand tightened on my shoulder like an iron clamp. Then she looked at Luca. "Let go. I'll take your brother."

Luca, unable to endure those piercing eyes, did as she asked. He let me go, and then Darah dragged me forward with a strength that would have made Edo quake in his steel boots.

"Do you know why this hill is so important, Dean?" Darah asked while she dragged me toward the other end of the tent to the opposite entryway.

My tired and injured body could barely keep up with the pressure of being pulled forward.

"This hill... is the entryway to the Magesong Clan's... territory," I answered with difficulty.

Darah asked a followup question. "And why do we consider this the entryway when the Magesong Clan's cities are much further away from here?"

"Because," My feet shuffled me through the tent flap on the opposite side of where we entered. "We're in the Calmlands which is west of the Spellweave River Valley, the center of the Magesong Clan's power."

I glanced up at the sky. It was still dark but the storm clouds had vanished, and I thought about how the weather in the Fayne seemed as capricious as the fairies who lived here.

"And what makes these Calmlands so significant?" Darah pressed as she dragged me up to the circle of white stones.

"Exactly that. It's calm," I answered.

There was a longer explanation for this but that would mean discussing a very important natural resource that only exists in the Fayne—something Great General Darah already knew. After all, she was walking me into one.

Darah pushed me through the space between the stone circles, and I found myself transported into a place of verdant grass and trees. A myriad of vibrant flowers grew among the healthiest shrubs I'd ever seen. The sky above was not the dark clouds I just left behind but an aurora of green and blue and purple hues. It reflected the light of the single small pool at the very center of the garden which glowed with its own inner light.

This was the secret all fairy forts held. This secret garden at the very center of the hilltop and the pool within that filled this space with magical energy.

Noticing the wide-eyed look on my face, Darah commented, "You've never seen a mana well up close before, have you?"

I shook my head dumbly as the sight of the well held me captive.

Even with the bird's-eye-view provided by Fool's Insight, I could never see into what was inside the fairy fort's ring of white stones, although I knew what lay inside. I assumed the cause of my blindness was magic, and that multicolored sky was proof that I was right.

The entire secret garden must have been less than fifty square meters in total. It was a short distance for my feet to take me to the center where the mana well was.

Darah followed behind me.

I looked into the glowing pool that was about the size of a round jacuzzi tub, and what I found reflected at me was not my own face but a canvas of stars brightly lit across a clear blue morning sky.

"hmmm," I heard Darah behind me. "It looks like someone's touched it. That fool Roselle must have pinched a bit of mana before he ran away with his wings between his legs."

"He did enter this place before he left," I agreed, although I left out the part that I sent Qwipps in here to look for him too.

"Well, you should go cleanse it then," and with zero warning, Darah pushed me into the mana well.

Getting thrown into a pool full of magical energy wasn't something I wanted to do without testing first. After all, what if it was the equivalent of radioactive sludge and melted me into dust, or worse, turned me into some kind of genetic freak?

Panic flared up in my chest and I thrashed below the surface of the pool. This anxiety stayed with me until I realized that I wasn't drowning. I was breathing.

I opened my eyes.

Pale blue orbs with fiery tails swam in the pool around me like shooting stars crossing the night sky.

Calm returned to me as I watched them pass by. And when one brushed me, I could feel warm energy, similar to the feel of Aura's glowing bracelet, pass into me.

After an unknown amount of time passed, I swam up, and when I broke the water's surface, I found Great General Darah sitting on the grass beside the mana well. It seemed she'd been waiting for me.

Darah waited for me with her legs intertwined in the lotus position. "Now you know what you were fighting for..."

"I..." I nodded, suddenly speechless. Such a priceless feeling it was to be wading in this well. I could feel myself getting stronger as if I could break through the limits imposed on me by my genetics.

"In the vastness of the Calmlands, there are only three mana wells. Each one hidden in a fairy fort hill. The one in the north is under the control of the Chariot Lords of Wheel Nation. The Magesong Clan of Spellweave River Valley controlled the other two... that is, until tonight when your unit took full control of this western hill," Darah explained. "Do you understand what that means?"

I thought about it for a few seconds before I responded with, "We now have a way to cross the Calmlands without worrying about depleting our mana supply..."

Darah nodded. "Mana fuels much of a fairy's power and technology… Mana wells like this one are our primary source of it."

I lifted my hand to watch the water cascade down through the gaps of my fingers like a waterfall. "I guess mana is to fairies what oil is to us, humans..."

"An apt deduction," Darah agreed. "Although we rarely destroy our environment to gain it, unlike the way you humans do. We just kill each other for it."
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I made to wade out of the pool of mana but then Great General Darah held up a hand.

"Stay there for a while. It'll help you cultivate and reinforce the arcane energies flowing inside you," she instructed.

"I don't have any arcane energy in me... I'm human," I reminded the general.

"That is a common misconception... all living things possess a bit of arcane energy inside them. Humanity may not have as much as the different fairy races, but you have it." Darah placed a hand in the pool. "You simply lack the understanding to harness it."

I watched as the mana climbed up Darah's arm and get absorbed into her skin like a sponge. Immediately afterward, Darah's eyes lit up with its own inner light, and I felt power radiate out of her in a wave of invisible energy.

"How do I—"

"Awaken your fairy gift inside the pool and allow it to evolve beyond what you can currently do with it," she instructed.

"Evolve?" I asked.

Darah nodded. "Although fairy gifts are rarely unique to an individual, they are a resonance between the clan you serve and the arcane potential in you. As you grow, your gifts grow with you."

Darah took her hand out of the pool. "This is your first lesson. Evolve your fairy gift past its current use here and now."

"My first…" The confusion was clear in my furrowed brow. "lesson?"

"I have chosen to take you under my wing. You will report directly to Fort Darah from now on as the replacement Hundred-Man Commander of your current unit," There was a smirk on Darah's lips.

The shock showing on my face made Darah laugh. I couldn't help thinking how similar it sounded to Aura's own laughter.

"However, don't start thinking too highly of yourself, Dean Dapper. You have potential but that is not the only reason I promoted you," Darah admitted.

"What's the other reason, General?" I asked, curious.

She shrugged. "The best way I can watch over my foolhardy niece is by making sure her foolhardy captain is under my thumb, yes?"

This was a fair assumption. The General certainly knew the right tactics to use here.

"Foolhardy," I whispered, not at all against the idea Darah proposed. After all, I would officially become a Hundred-Man Commander now. "I like the sound of that…"

"Yes-yes, that name really suits you," Darah's eyes twinkled. "Alright… from now on, I will name your hundred-man unit as The Foolhardies."

"F-foolhardies?" I wondered if that was even a word. "I Don't get to choose?"

Darah's eyebrow shot up. "You have something against my naming sense?"

I shook my head quickly as I felt a murderous intent coming from Great General Darah. "Foolhardies is great."

Darah nodded satisfied. Then she said, "Well? Are you planning to chat with me until dawn arrives? Begin with your training!"

I quickly did as ordered and activated fool's Insight while still in the mana well, all the while wondering what Luca and Aura would think of our unit's new name.

Chapter end