The system message informing him that his Mana Burn had subsided was a relief; although the status effect hadn’t negatively affected him too much, what with multiple sources of Mana regeneration to draw on to overcome their reduced effectiveness, the threat of overworking himself and doing even more damage to himself had been like a weight on his shoulders that had prompted him to slow down. Now that it had passed he didn’t have to worry about that anymore and he didn’t have to be so hesitant with his experiments.

Speaking of which, it seemed like he was on the right track with his idea of drawing material into raw Mana to change its properties. Although merely submerging the Mana in water wasn’t enough for it to change its properties, the Mana instead being washed away which had its own implications, actively trying to draw water into the sphere produced the desired effect. The Mana Orb became translucent, blending into the water itself, only visible by the thin boundary between it and the actual water and the feel of it against his palm, before it too was washed away as he stopped concentrating on maintaining its shape.

Pulling his hand from the water, Oberon stepped back from the stream’s edge and gave this result some thought. It was possible to create elementally-aligned Mana by drawing an element or power from that element into a spell of raw Mana like his Mana Orb or by infusing a material with Mana like with the Stone Shot spell; he’d seen this happen with multiple elements now and had proven that it could be done on command like he had just done with the stream. The question now was… what were the limits of this?

It was fair to assume that magic in this world had a set number of elemental natures that it could take on, starting with the classical elements of fire, earth, water and air alongside more esoteric examples like nature or light; these elements were probably already known by the more knowledgeable magic users in this world, barring a few really weird examples. The scientific idea of the period table of elements from his world wouldn’t apply here; no iron or copper magic, just a generic ‘metal’ element, no helium magic, just ‘air’. Perhaps it was more conceptual in nature; the different elemental types driven by this worlds expectations of what was an element and what wasn’t with the effects of those spells affected by the subconscious will of the user as he had somewhat seen already. The Sprite supposed it didn’t matter much anyway, but it was interesting to think about; as scientific knowledge in this world advanced, would magic evolve with it as the common consensus changed?

More relevant right now was to think about what other elements were at play. Light Mana existed; did that mean shadow magic was a thing? Darkness Mana? Would bathing a Mana Orb in shadows and trying to draw their power into it work? That would be something to try tonight, perhaps. If he could find something made out of metal he could experiment with that as well; there was nothing at hand at the moment, but once they met up with those Goblins again maybe he could trade them something for one of their salvaged items. There was also the stream to work with; he hadn’t actually done anything with the water orb, bubble orb or whatever it would be called and he would have to go back to it later.

For now there was something else Oberon wanted to try. He raised a hand and produced a Mana Orb, holding it in the palm of his upturned hand and keeping it there. From there he tried to focus on the ambient Mana in the air around them, tapping into the same kind of senses that he used during his mediation to pick up on and draw into the dispersed field of raw Mana that seemed to exist in everything. Once he had a sense of that power he tried to change his perceptions, focusing not on the raw, unaligned Mana but the power in the air itself, power which he could hopefully channel directly into the Mana Orb rather than into himself. This would likely be harder than drawing power from the water or infusing it into the ground, since the air was looser for lack of a better word, harder to grasp. Nonetheless Oberon was willing to keep trying until he saw some sign of success.

Conquering the elements one step at a time seemed like a good of his efforts.

[hider=Action Report]
Cast 'Mana Orb'
Attempt to draw power from the air into the 'Mana Orb'
[/hider]

[@Zeroth]