The room was silent, wrapped in the calm of the approaching midnight. A faint flame hovered above a small metallic base beside Noel's bed, flickering gently—a floating lamp he had ignited with fire magic. Its orange light cast long shadows across the room.
Noel sat cross-legged on the floor, his back resting against the side of the bed, a thick book open in his hands. The title read Mana Theory – Intermediate Concepts. His eyes moved quickly over the lines, but every few seconds, they darted toward the egg in front of him.
Wrapped carefully in a folded cloth, the egg pulsed faintly with an internal glow. The system's message hovered softly in the air above it:
[Incubation: 0.01%]
'Just 0.1% left. Almost there.'
But Noel didn't move toward it. Instead, he flipped the page of his book and groaned internally.
'Mana conversion efficiency, elemental displacement theory, natural leylines... This crap is worse than what I went through back in the tunnels.'
