After an hour of trying to manually control the brightness of three different glow strips, two with his skills and one with just his mana, James had a splitting headache and had to stop.

Thankfully, he had plenty of mana. Using these small items was far, far less draining than some of the more intensive enchantments he had attempted in the past.

But his current strategy wasn't showing any signs of progress.

Now an hour isn't a long time to try something and is quite a short time to decide that a strategy, especially for training, isn't going to work.

But after almost a thousand attempts, every one ending the same way, with no sign of change whatsoever, it seemed worth trying some other way of doing things.

Every single time, he had successfully activated two glow strips with his skills and confirmed he could independently control the brightness of each strip. Then, using just his mana and no skills, James would attempt to activate a third glow strip, which caused him to lose control of his mana, and his skills and enchantments to deactivate. The entire process took roughly four seconds.

James flopped backwards on the pebbly beach, covering his eyes with an arm, and waited for the headache to subside. As he did, relaxing and resting, he could feel his mana cooling and solidifying like a piece of metal pulled from the forge and left to sit.

Normally, he kept it moving by activating an enchantment, usually his shield. This created a small flow of mana between him and the shield, which in turn warmed up his mana and made it easier to activate other enchantments, usually one of his hammers.

If he focused, for short bursts, he could force movement in his mana just inside his body, not going anywhere, but it was like trying to push a boulder along the ground. Hard, slow, and as soon as he stopped putting in effort, all movement stopped. Part of the problem was it felt like there was nowhere for his mana to go in the first place, as long as he was out of contact with any enchanted items.

When there was an enchanted item, it was much easier. His mana would move into the item, and the item itself would continue to accept pushed mana.

Thankfully, trying to push his mana around aimlessly didn't cause his headache to get any worse, so he played around with that for a while. It was play, for it was neither work nor training, but it was still intense mental activity. By the time James' headache dissipated, he was soaked with sweat.

James took a break. He ate a hearty meal of smoked crab meat and some sauerkraut, went to sleep, awoke, tidied up the campsite, killed a crab monster that came to investigate, harvested its materials, and then sat down again with all his glow strips spread out in front of him on the ground.

First, he confirmed that what he had been doing the day before hadn't changed. He activated two glow strips with skills, tried to manually push mana into a third, and his concentration broke just like before.

No change when he tried skills first, then manual activation.

For his next attempt, he tried manually activating one enchantment, then using his skills to activate another. With some effort, but much less than just trying to move his mana without an outlet, he pushed his mana into a glow strip through his fingers, and the strip of iron started to glow, brighter and brighter as he pushed more mana in.

Then he tried to activate two more with his skills and his concentration broke.

James sat back up, gazed down at the glow strips – now all dull – and tried to imagine why that had happened.

For several long minutes he sat, but the only thing that came to mind was that it was impossible to manually push mana into an enchantment while using skills to control other enchantments.

And James didn't want this to be true, because it would be unproductive if it were. And if he assumed it was true, and it wasn't, then he'd be wasting an opportunity to train, here and now, in the safety of his camp, compared to fighting monsters while activating as many enchantments as he could, which did seem to cause his skills to improve.

James put this train of thought aside and tried a new tack. He knew his limits using [Enchantment Activation] and [Mana Manipulation], but how many glow strips could he activate just by pushing mana into them without using any skills?

Thus far he hadn't tried, because while he wasn't using any skills, he had to be physically touching the item to push mana into it. [Enchantment Activation] let him activate enchantments across a short gap, a foot or two at most, which was how he had planned to activate and use his heating strips through the mole monster hide insulation.

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James reached out and picked up two of the glow strips, one in each hand. He took a deep breath, and pushed against his stiff, cold mana. With some effort, after a second, both glow strips started to shine. This was unexpected, because James had only intended to activate the enchantment in his right hand first, then try to activate the second in his left.

Intrigued, he picked up another two glow strips, so that he held two in each hand, between his fingers. With another push against his mana, all four of the glow strips started to shine, growing brighter the harder he pushed on his mana.

The same occurred with six glow strips, and finally at eight glow strips, set out on the ground so that he could touch one with each finger, he felt that he was approaching his limit. He could activate all the enchantments, but the effort required to push his mana into the enchantments was increasing and it took more effort to make the glow strips brighter.

At nine glow strips, he felt a faint headache coming on. But he had surpassed his previous limit of eight.

At ten glow strips he still did not feel as though he was using much of his mana, but mental fatigue was accumulating from focusing on his mana so much, and the effort to make the glow strips brighter was growing more and more. Then he felt it.

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Activation] has reached level 5.

The intrusive thought broke his concentration, and a faint headache remained as he reflected on his achievement.

Without combat, he had managed to improve his skill.

This time, he tried activating ten of the glow strips with his skill, but he only managed nine.

Still, it was progress. If he kept at it, he expected he could eventually activate all the glow strips manually, and improve his skill enough to be able to activate them all through his skill.

At the end of a day of training, with breaks to kill crab monsters:

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Activation] has reached level 6.

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Activation] has reached level 7.

James was able manually activate fifteen of the glow strips while touching them, and thirteen of them with his skill. He had also gotten accustomed to the mental effort of pushing his mana around without the aid of a skill. It didn't feel any easier, but he was used to it, and at least a little faster.

The next day he continued. By lunchtime he could manually activate eighteen of the glow strips, although his skill didn't improve. It was at the very end of the day, when his mental fatigue was at its peak and another headache was coming on, that James managed to active twenty-one of the glow strips and he felt the intrusive thought.

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Activation] has reached level 8.

Testing his skill, he found he was able to activate twenty-one of the glow strips at once, just like with his manual activation. But it was far easier, and they all immediately leapt to full brightness, unlike when manually he had to push harder on his mana to brighten them.

Exhausted, James went to sleep.

Finally, at the end of the next day, James had done it. He had managed to not only manually activate all twenty-four of the glow strips, but also then activate his shield and one of his war hammers, for a total of twenty-six simultaneous enchantments. He practiced activating them manually, trying to do it quickly, for an hour before the intrusive thought came to him.

Enchanter Class Skill [Enchantment Activation] has reached level 9.

And now he had done it. With merely a thought and almost no mental effort, he could activate any number of the glow strips as well as his hammer and shield.

However, he still couldn't control the intensity of that many. In fact, the limit was still four if he wanted to adjust their brightness in sync, and two if he wanted to adjust their brightness independently.

But James was exhausted, so he went to sleep.

The next morning, he spent several hours using his skills on two of the glow strips, and eventually determined that he wasn't improving by using the skill.

James once again laid out his glow strips and touched ten of them, one with each finger. First, he manually activated one, and adjusted its brightness from dim to bright and back down to dim. Then, while maintaining the activation of that one glow strip, he activated a second, and adjusted that one's brightness while holding the first one constant.

When he added the third, he could feel the mental strain increase, but he was once again able to maintain the first two glow strips, and adjust the third freely.

At four the headache started to grow, and he noticed that the other three glow strips were unconsciously starting to brighten and dim in sync with the fourth. It took a lot more focus to keep them all separate…

Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 5.

And once again James lost his focus and all the enchantments deactivated. But he knew he was making progress, and he smiled.

After lunch he returned to it, but focused again on manual activation and manipulation of the enchantments. By the end of the day, he could independently control ten of the glow strips.

Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 6.

And after another three days…

Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 7.

Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 8.

Enchanter Class Skill [Mana Manipulation] has reached level 9.

James could now independently control all twenty-four of the glow strips, as well as his shield and his hammer.

With his skills, activating each enchantment was simple, and if he kept all the glow strips in sync, it was nearly effortless, although there was now a noticeable, if slight, drain on his mana from using that many enchantments. With more mental effort, he could pick out individual glow strips and adjust their brightness separate from the others, and with full concentration, he could control them all independently at the same time.

Enchanter Class has reached level 7.

James was shocked that his class had managed to level up from all this training. But he was so mentally exhausted he just accepted it and went to sleep.

The next day, James donned his heating system and armor, and gave it a very short test run.

Enchanter Skill [Enchantment Testing] has reached level 4.

Synergy Skill [Product Testing] has reached level 4.

Success. He was able to control each heating strip and avoid damaging them. He took his shield and hammer in hand and set out, towards the snowy passage once again.

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