Mana sources were a mysterious thing, and one I still didn’t understand. In some ways, it was just mana that had been converted to another state. Or perhaps, it was the state that preempted mana. Mana sources could be used as a spell reagent. It could amplify the strength of a spell beyond your level and mana strength. Also, if you used a spell reagent with a skill for the first time, that skill would create a new, more powerful skill.

I didn’t quite know how skill synthesis fits in with dungeons. Since everything else in this world was the accumulation of preexisting lore, then I wondered if these new skills we created were the equivalent of new lore. We used the mana of the world and pre-existing knowledge to create new lore that previously didn’t exist, a skill that didn’t belong to any job class but was uniquely my own. We called these combination skills.

No book in this world had ever mentioned such a thing. Since it involved the creation of new lore, I imagined it was something only the most powerful understanding. Combination skills had limitations. I could only learn one combination skill per mana source. Thankfully, I could also combine mana sources to create new combination skills.

To date, I had only discovered the existence of four mana sources. Miki could create the mana source spiritual fire, which I came to understand was created by burning a soul. This was something I had only sort of come to understand since Miki had become Lady Death and started eating souls. A soul could be set on fire, much like kindling. This is why it was so damaging to ghosts. Without realizing it, Miki would pull spiritual energy to herself using her spirit tails, and then ignite it to create spirit fire.

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Miasma was the most well-established and well-known mana source. It was corrupted mana, a sort of twisted mana that ran counter to the lifestream of this world. There were many types of miasma, coming from different dungeons and different worlds, but when it came to reagents, there was no distinction. Fairy dust was created by fairies, and it seemed to be a result of their mana gathering. Fairies gathered and condensed mana, and the result of that condensation was fairy dust. Finally, there was Gaia, which was the energy directly from the lifestream. It was richer and fuller than standard mana, having come straight from the source of this world.

With these four mana sources, I had created a half dozen skills on my own, and a couple more for the girls. These skills that seemed to exist outside of the job cycle were extremely powerful, but also extremely odd. Create Water of Life had been the one that had truly changed everything for us. It was the reason my girls had survived so much, and the reason my dungeon had grown as powerful as it did. Knowing that it was a skill I had created that previously didn’t exist in this world reassured me a little bit, but could someone else with Fairy Dust and the Absorb skill also make this skill again? It was something that worried me.

“What could this fifth reagent be?” I asked out loud.

“It feels… ancient,” Alysia spoke up, something she rarely did unless something particularly caught her interest.

“Alysia?”

“Since I’m a sword, I see things from a slightly different perspective than everyone else.” Alysia continued. “I can’t tell you why, but I feel… like there is something wrong here. Something wrong… with time!”