"Are we there yet?"
Brunswick's dazed voice startled Stitches, and he turned to look at Lucy to see if he knew. But without anyone noticing, Lucy had already disappeared from Brunswick's lap and sat on Toz's head instead.
Stitches didn't have an answer to Brunswick's question, but Toz's activities were more than enough for them to know that they had indeed arrived at their destination.
After Taienra stopped in the middle of nowhere, Toz began hauling Dristel and Stris onto a boat so that they wouldn't be trapped in the wood while Taienra broke through.
Dristel and Stris didn't have any martial energy in their bodies, and they were severely fatigued and malnourished, so they couldn't put up a fight or try to resist. But since Toz didn't know how long Taienra's breakthrough would take, he still decided to prevent them from recovering their martial energy by sending some of his void mana into their bodies.
Toz's mana wouldn't do any harm to their bodies, but it would dispel their martial energy and prevent them from recovering. If the brothers hadn't already been emptied of their martial energy, Toz's sixth level mana wouldn't have done much, but now, it would be more than enough to dispel any martial energy they recovered as soon as it recovered.
After Toz placed Dristel and Stris in one corner of the boat, the cats, Brunswick, Stitches, and Hayar joined him on it as they sailed away a short distance so that Taienra could break through in peace.
"Is this enough?"
Since Taienra had only said that they should put some distance between them while she broke through, Toz asked Asilean if they were far enough away.
"Maybe a little more."
Toz followed Asilean's advice, and they moved further away and only stopped when they could sense Taienra beginning her breakthrough.
Taienra's reserves of mana dwarfed even Toz's since her mana pool was proportionate to her body and because she had access to the mana stored in the void trees. And when she began moving all that mana around, condensing it, she gave rise to powerful fluctuations that reached Toz and the others before continuing further into the Void.
Due to the forest on her back being part of her body and mana circulatory system, Taienra took it slow during her breakthrough so that she would have time to respond to any troubles that might occur.
After a while, Taienra began absorbing the mana in her surroundings to help her condense her mana.
Although it was a breakthrough across divisions, the procedure was still mostly the same.
Taienra had to condense her mana while expanding her mana pool. However, this time, she couldn't end it at having made the mana in her mana pool into a thicker liquid. In order to complete the breakthrough to the seventh level, Taienra had to transform her liquid mana into a solid block of mana.
Of course, the mana would only be solid while within the mana pool. As soon as a seventh level mage tried to use the mana, it would burst forth with unprecedented speed and power.
Taienra brought the mana from her surroundings into her mana pool alongside the mana from the trees. However, the mana from the trees didn't mix with the mana from the surroundings.
Taienra was stumped, but she only had a moment to decide what to do, and she decided to only take in the mana from the trees. She could sense that the mana from the trees was of a higher quality and purity than the surrounding mana, which wasn't too surprising when she realized it.
Just like the trees used her mana to strengthen themselves, they strengthened the mana in return.
It was a good thing that the trees improved the quality of the mana since it would make it easier during her breakthrough, but the trees didn't contain enough mana for her to come very far. At best, it would be enough for her to barely reach the threshold of the seventh level, turning her mana into a brittle orb of mana.
At worst, she would fail her breakthrough. Her mana pool, already transformed and ready to accommodate the solid mana, wouldn't be suitable for her still liquid mana, and she wouldn't be able to store mana in it anymore.
However, Taienra remembered something that Toz had told her about the trees soon after they met.
The void trees absorbed the mana in their surroundings to sustain themselves and the atmosphere on the island of trees. As well as keep the air filled with mana so that Toz and the others could train. She hadn't noticed much of it after the trees attached to her back since they used her mana to do those things instead.
Aside from the mana the trees absorbed to keep a balance of different attributes on the island, they hadn't absorbed anything to strengthen themselves, which meant they hadn't brought foreign mana into Taienra's system. Taienra could understand it since her mana would be better than most of the mana found loosely drifting around the Void.
However, now that she needed more mana to complete her breakthrough with as much success as possible, the trees would have to change their operation a little.
Taienra stretched her already sparse consciousness into the trees. Controlling the mana from the trees and the mana in her mana pool was already straining her mind. And when she also began trying to control the trees, the strain turned into a headache. But Taienra pressed on as she commanded the trees.
Taienra wasn't sure what the trees were capable of, but she didn't want to take any risks.
She couldn't be sure the trees would be able to convert other elements in time for her breakthrough, or at all, so she used the trees to begin absorbing the starlight mana in the surroundings.
Beginning from the roots attached to Taienra, the trees slowly began lighting up with a cold, white light. The light spread up the trees, to the branches, and even into the leaves. The exceptions were the fire flowers Mindle made, the shadow dolls Lucy made, the budding lightning fruits Scrael made, some of the highly concentrated constructs Nil made, and Toz's sword.
The forest of faintly shining white trees began affecting Taienra's surroundings when the last leaf changed color and began glowing.
The thinly but evenly spread starlight mana in the Void began moving toward Taienra. The starlight mana turned into streaks of light visible to the naked eye as it streaked toward the forest on Taienra's back, where it was devoured and guided toward Taienra's mana pool.
Taienra hadn't expected such an astounding result since not even she could separate and absorb the starlight mana in the surroundings with such effect.
Since they were in the Void and there were a lot of stars there, there was naturally a lot of star attribute mana in the Void. But outside of areas in the stars' immediate surroundings, the starlight mana was too thin for Taienra to bother absorbing only that. It was more efficient to absorb all the mana and convert it into starlight mana instead of only targeting and absorbing the star mana around her.
However, the trees didn't seem to have that same problem as they easily only absorbed the starlight mana, bringing it straight to Taienra's mana pool.
The new flood of mana wasn't of the same quality as the mana previously stored within the trees, but it was good enough to help Taienra with her breakthrough. The rushing impact of the mana even helped her further condense the mana in her mana pool.
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