I stand up and quickly throw the weapon I created with all the force I can muster, even boosting it with kinetic energy.

The javelin flies, shining in beautiful light blue, light purple, and dark blue colors, leaving a trail of mana behind it. It pierces through three houses before it untangles, releasing all the mana it held in one massive explosion.

Threads of mana wave from the javelin, slashing and cutting apart the surrounding area. Tendrils of three different colors and even a shockwave can be felt as the densely squeezed mana expands.

As a result, a massive area around the javelin ends up destroyed, breaking apart, and debris of stone and wood falls down with loud noises, releasing dust and small pieces of debris that immediately get blown away by the wind.

The best part is that it wasn't even meant to be an attack. All of this was only densely squeezed mana untangling as I released my hold over it and stopped forcing it to move.

Yes, I said that, the best part!

The heck, how great is that? Sure, I could do something similar using [Redistribution], but that's not the point.

Just how strong can my armor be? How strong can my projectiles be if I learn to control it a bit more? And why the heck did I not think of redistributing my mana to make it faster and push through the limit I felt? It sounds so logical now that I get to it.

I quickly check the notifications.

[Redistribution - lvl 23 > Redistribution - lvl 24]

[Mana Infusion - lvl 10 > Mana Infusion - lvl 11]

[Mana Infusion - lvl 11 > Mana Infusion - lvl 12]

[Mana Infusion - lvl 12 > Mana Infusion - lvl 13]

[Armament - lvl 28 > Armament - lvl 29]

Oh my, I like this! Let's try it again!

"Nat," I hear, and turn to Tess, who looks at me with a serious look on her face. "That javelin contained more mana than my entire mana pool."

Tess is there with her stern gaze, her features in a serious expression. The weight of her words hangs heavy between us. She seems to be warning me, indirectly telling me to be more careful.

Ok, that's quite scary now that I think about it.

"Can you keep watch?" I ask instead and don't even bother sending another signal. If no monsters come after this, nothing will lure them closer.

The blonde just shakes her head and sighs, yet she still keeps watch. Her eyes continue to pierce through the darkness around us and look for mana signatures moving towards us.

And I create a small orb of pale blue mana and start infusing it with as much mana as I'm able to. At some point, I have to stop, unable to push more. It just feels like there is resistance as if the orb is full. But then I use [Redistribution], which moves a massive amount of mana and quickly, easily pushes against this resistance, and passes through [Mana Infusion] inside the orb.

This time, I'm more careful and observe as the light blue and purple colors get inserted into a dark blue orb. The colors do not mix to create other colors; instead, it looks as if they all swirl inside the orb. Imagine dropping drops of dye into a glass of water and then swirling it without the colors mixing.

Actually, it's quite beautiful.

Seeing that I can push even more, I force the mana inside the orb, and now I notice that it really has become heavier. How does it even make sense? If mana had such weight, wouldn't I become heavier every time I use mana?

Yet it still somehow does, the tricolored orb with mana swirling inside it and with every passing moment threatening to explode right there in my hand.

As I watch it, it just feels like something I shouldn't be doing, like something I shouldn't be ABLE to do.

At that moment, I hesitate. All my senses warn me, nearly screaming in my head and as I'm about to push even more mana into the small orb, I slowly come back to reality, feeling as if I just woke up.

This is dangerous; I should give it some time and not push it the way I did when creating my second construct. There, I also hurried too much and made my move earlier than I should have, and it almost cost me my life.

So let's wait. Let's think about it more and examine it more.

As for the orb, I shoot it as far as I can, and after a few seconds, it expands into a bubble with a surface made of tricolored mana, a bubble as big as an entire house.

While expanding, the orb's surface is firm, winning against the material the house is made of and pushing it away while staying anchored to the place as it expands.

Then, the bubble made of mana bursts open with an audible pop, and as if affected by some extremely strong siphon force, the pieces of the trashed house are pulled to where the center of the orb used to be, crashing against each other, and some breaking even further as they spin for a while around the center.

Then, for a short moment, silence ensues before the wind and mist fill out the empty space in the air. The house is gone, destroyed by an orb not bigger than a grape. An orb I could fill with even more mana.

Yup, let's be more careful. Very careful.

What appears after a few more minutes is something we decide not to fight and hide from without any hesitation. We came here to level and hunt, not to die, you know. This is just a straight-up unfair match.

The monster is massive, easily as big as a house and a bit, walking through the streets without any worry in the world. Its head towers over the slightly smaller houses. One of its eyes is missing, and the other one, milky white, glows in a sickly green color, shining even in the darkness of the city and the mist.

The monster walks on all fours, weirdly limping yet moving nimbly. Over the middle of its back, three projectiles made of green mana float. Mana arrows, each as big as a car and elongated into a sharp shape.

Yup, Bambi's curse is back and stronger than ever before.

[Undead Aberrant Deer - lvl ??]

So yeah, we both sit inside a house while the massive undead deer passes by. Each of us limits our mana as much as we can and pulls it all back into our bodies in an attempt to stop its leakage outside that could warn the monster.

There is also a worry that it might find us through heat detection or sniff us out or whatever, but that's something too late to worry about.

The massive monster appeared almost out of nowhere and rushed towards where my orb exploded, destroying a few dozen houses that stood in its way, literally bulldozing through them without taking any damage.

There isn't a single thought of fighting it in my mind. I touched its mana only once, and the feeling of it disturbed me deeply.

This is not a fight I should take right now, not even with Tess by my side.

So there we are, both close to each other, nearly hugging, as I try to create a disrupting field around us, reducing even the small mana particles we leak to smaller ones, all while only controlling my mana.

Tess's eyes are firm, and even in this situation, she is reliable as always. She is not using any skills at all, and we are not even looking towards the monster, as there are monsters able to detect even someone just looking at them.

Hell, the Undead Aberrant Deer could be now easily staring through the window at us.

The only sense left to us is hearing and feeling the vibrations. Even through the raging wind, we hear the monster's steps and feel vibrations going through our bodies every time it takes another one.

The monster continues to destroy a few more houses near the place where the orb exploded, and we only sit there, waiting for minutes after which the silence ensues after a few more steps the undead monster takes.

But we continue to stay in that same place for one hour longer, not daring to make any move and limiting our mana. Only after a long while, I let out a quiet sigh of relief.

We survived, but goddamn it, that was tense.

Finally, after an hour of sitting in the corner of the room, I open my eyes and lift up my head to look outside at the result of the monster's attack.

And there, staring right at me without blinking and from behind the window, is the eye nearly as big as me.

The deer's only eye that glows in a green color.