Chapter 204: When Even America Fails

The humming sound gradually faded as the intense vibrations running through Magna’s body began to die down.

As the mutation finally came to an end, he let out a deep sigh and slowly got up from the ground.

His entire body ached, especially his back.

The vibrations had been so intense that they had left bruises on his skin and a few small wounds on his head.

Thankfully, his high Stamina made the injuries easy to ignore, so he opened his status panel and checked his updated stats.

Strength: 675

Agility: 207

Reaction: 198

Stamina: 1156

Mana: 0.1%

His Stamina had increased by exactly 50. It might have seemed like a small improvement compared to his overall stats, but it was still a solid gain.

He also checked his Mana, although there was no way to see the difference yet.

He looked around again to make sure no one had arrived during his vibration... mutation. Once he was certain he was alone, he walked over to the sack of food and began taking out its contents.

The mutation had left him hungry again, his stomach feeling completely empty, so he started eating quickly.

After consuming a little more than half of what remained in the sack, he checked his Mana.

Mana: 100.8%

He waited for a while to see if the number after the decimal point would decrease as it usually did.

But even after 10 minutes, the 8 stubbornly refused to go down, bringing a satisfied smile to his face.

Gaia had also presented him with another set of 3 options, but he only gave them a quick glance. Seeing that none offered anything he urgently needed, he dismissed the panel for now, intending to decide which one to choose later.

He continued eating until there was nothing left in the sack, then checked his mana stat again.

Mana: 165.3%

This time, he waited around 30 minutes, but once again, his mana didn’t decrease in the slightest.

’Nice.’

He had finally solved one of his biggest problems concerning mana.

From now on, as long as his mana didn’t exceed 200%, he could eat and drink as many mana-rich foods as he wanted without worrying about any of it going to waste.

Now he could finally try casting that spell and completing its unfinished mana pattern without having to worry about his reserves.

"Khhhh... Ssssh... Gshhh."

Magna once again began producing strange sounds, trying to imitate the noise of stone scraping against stone.

As the weird and rather embarrassing noises echoed around him, the mana pattern inside his body began taking shape.

—

"What’s he doing now?" Triss asked, watching him with curious eyes.

She was experiencing so many different emotions at once. Excitement, curiosity, nervousness. Feelings she hadn’t experienced in a very long time were all returning together.

She was beginning to feel nostalgic, reminded of her childhood, when she was still discovering the world and looking at everything with the curiosity and wonder of a child.

Arthas, who had already started ignoring her strange behavior, was finally beginning to understand it.

He wasn’t stupid enough to believe the boy was as ordinary as he appeared.

Magna was strange and unusual enough that Arthas should have already started writing a report to send to Hecate. But he was also too curious about what would happen next, having become absorbed in watching the boy himself.

After watching for quite some time, trying to understand what he was doing, they finally saw a triumphant smile appear on Magna’s face as he excitedly jumped to his feet.

Then, under their expectant eyes, Magna walked toward the huge rock.

Once he reached it, he stood there for a while, apparently thinking about something, before beginning to mutter again.

"What’s he saying?" Triss asked, since her hearing wasn’t nearly as good as Arthas’s.

She was also so tense at that moment that she wasn’t even in the right state of mind to cast a spell to improve her hearing.

"He seems to be chanting the honorable names of the Matriarch of Fate..." Arthas answered with a frown, not quite able to catch the reason of it.

Triss’s expression changed as well, unable to understand why he would do that.

Then Arthas spoke again, continuing to listen.

"Now he’s chanting the honorable names of the Matriarch of Time."

"Is he simply praying?" Triss guessed.

It hadn’t even occurred to her that he might be trying to cast a spell, considering he wasn’t a Witch.

"Now the Matriarch of Life," Arthas reported shortly afterward, followed by Order and Death.

Magna had chanted the honorable names of all 5 Great Mothers, one after another, with short pauses between them, without doing anything else.

That only made the 2 observers more curious about what he was trying to accomplish.

After trying all 5 chants, Magna stood silently for a while, appearing to think again, before he began muttering once more.

"What’s he saying now?" Triss asked again.

This time, Arthas hesitated before awkwardly repeating what he heard.

"O Founding Fathers of America, Defenders of Freedom, Protectors of the Second Amendment! Bless me with the power of liberty, the wisdom of democracy, and the courage of a true patriot... Make America great again?"

He repeated the words with a strange look on his face, not even knowing what America meant.

Triss was equally confused and suspicious as she gave him a sideways glance. "Are you sure?" She was beginning to think Arthas’s hearing had deteriorated after living for so long.

—

’Come on, why isn’t anything working?’ Magna thought with a frown.

He was certain he had perfectly reproduced the unknown spell’s mana pattern inside his mana channels. Everything was ready for the spell to be released.

The problem was that he couldn’t find the correct honorable names to chant and activate it.

Normally, every spell belonged to one of the main branches, and chanting the honorable names of the Matriarch who ruled that branch was enough to activate it.

But Magna had no idea which branch this particular spell belonged to. Unfortunately, it came with neither instructions for use nor any information about where it had been created.

In the end, after running out of chants to try, he was about to give up and attempt Glacial Calamity instead when another idea occurred to him.

He paused briefly, then decided it was worth trying. At least it sounded more logical than chanting about America.

After all, even if they were fictional, these were still the honorable names the AI populations in his games used to address him.

"Grand Author of Stats, Creator of All Classes, Absolute Bane of Those Who Try to Bypass."

After chanting those names, he began making the strange sounds again to form the unknown spell’s mana pattern inside his body.

Mana rapidly filled his channels and began taking shape, eventually gathering at the tip of his right index finger as its final release point.

He raised his finger and pointed it toward the oval rock.

He had already expected another failure, since this was the exact point where he had gotten stuck every time. The mana had never managed to turn into an actual spell.

But this time, it went further.

"Huh?"

Even Magna was surprised, almost shocked, when he saw a green glow beginning to form at the tip of his finger.

The light rapidly grew brighter before suddenly breaking apart into countless pieces, each one transforming into strings of strange letters and symbols.

Except they weren’t ordinary letters.

They looked more like lines of code, with unfamiliar commands appearing one after another.

<System.Override>

<Access Granted>

<World.Edit>

Countless strings of these commands materialized from the green light, spreading outward until they surrounded the entire rock.

And in the next second, the enormous rock that had remained indestructible and immovable for thousands of years finally began to move.