613 Victory Without Glory (1/2)

”No matter how you look at it, completely limitless mana is impossible…”

I started with something completely obvious. However, the other mages in my party were listening quite seriously.

First of all, in magical theory, having limitless mana was the equivalent of creating something (mana) from nothing. That would be within the realm of the Creator Goddess's power of Creation, something completely unreasonable.

And looking at it from another angle, if Conservation truly had limitless mana, she could simply toss out limitless forbidden spells against us. Why go to such trouble while fighting us?

If someone truly had limitless mana, there would be endless tactics available to deal with any enemy. For example, creating a limitless number of artificial bone giants. Even if the bone giants would never have enough power to instantly kill a SemiGod, the power of infinite numbers could slowly defeat anyone.

”…In my first fight against Conservation, she still hadn't achieved Main God power level. It's likely that she learned much from her fight against me. At that time, I had used my personal sealed-off Frigidwinter Earth world to defeat her by creating the 'Law of Energy Conservation' in my world, making all the energy that she stole paid with a cost to her true body…”

During our thirtieth battle against Conservation, we strengthened our attacks, forcing her to constantly summon cannon fodder and protect herself with powerful spells. Margaret used a simple magic wavelength analyzation spell and determined Conservation's mana usage condition. We confirmed that Conservation's mana pool was at a fixed upper limit.

”Should I say that it's to be expected of a Main God level mage? Such a ridiculous mana pool, but it's still within acceptable limits.”

Conservation's mana pool was approximately twelve times greater than Margaret's, and Margaret was a pure mage who had the largest mana pool out of any of us. Elisa was a demon, so her mana pool wasn't actually that large. Conservation's mana pool was also her greatest limit in how many spells and summoned creatures she could maintain. After we started measuring her mana level, no matter how much we forced her, the number of total spells and summoned creatures she maintained never exceeded her mana pool's limit.

”…Since there is a limit, then truly limitless mana will be impossible. Then, there are only two possibilities. The first is that her mana can recover incredibly quickly, almost instantaneously…”

If that was really the case, then this would be almost no different from truly having limitless mana. However, the possibility of this being true was almost nil. Mana regeneration would forever be a headache for all mages. The physical body required rest and meditation in order to recover mana. This was a well-known magical theory. It simply went against all established magical theory to be able to recover mana faster than one could use it.

And so, during our thirty-first battle against Conservation, Margaret cast a mana seal spell, Harloys cast a Curse of Dulling, and Elisa cast a mana burn spell. All of these spells were especially effective against mages and were anti-mana regeneration spells.

Our thirty-second battle against Conservation took place five minutes after the thirty-first. She was still under these debuffs, yet she maintained the same mana output that she had previously. Having all these mana regeneration debuffs on her didn't affect her mana usage one bit. In that case, we could eliminate the possibility that she had incredibly powerful mana regeneration.

I also heaved a sigh of relief when I arrived at this conclusion.

”…The second possibility is that she's capable of constantly maintaining a state of 'Conservation' around herself. This means that no matter how much mana she uses, all the mana that she used will return to her right when the spell disappears…”

Although this might seem no different from having limitless mana, as long as we knew the theory behind her power, we could naturally use some ways to counter her ability.

”…For the thirty-third battle, let's go somewhere else to fight. There's a little experiment I want to perform…”

We left the hotel and went outside to an uninhabited wasteland.

This time, we finished the battle against Conservation even quicker than normal. All I did was come into contact with one of her undead creations, and then I used instant teleportation to bring it out of my personal world of Hell!

Even though I had intentionally selected a powerful SemiGod rank undead creature, this undead only lasted one minute against all of our combined attacks. To our surprise, even though this SemiGod undead creature was no longer in the same world as its master, it was still capable of magical self-destruction.

Next up was the thirty-fourth battle against Conservation. This battle finished just as quickly. The only thing we did was measure Conservation's mana pool before retreating.

”How is it?”

”Her mana level has decreased by 5.88%. Your theory was correct. This is the first time that she's showed any sign of using up her mana pool. She is indeed using a special method to have all the mana she spends return back to herself.”