Chapter 613: Victory Without Glory

“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?”

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“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.”

I nodded in satisfaction. At this point, Conservation’s greatest technique had now been revealed. Even if we still didn’t know how she accomplished it, we could now counter it.

In the thirty-fifth battle, we took out eight gigantic undead beasts from my world. Conservation’s mana pool instantly shrunk by another 14%.

In the thirty-ninth battle, Conservation now only had two-thirds of her maximum mana pool. She no longer summoned undead creatures. Since she no longer had cannon fodder to tank for her, we managed to reach her, and Adam sliced off her right hand.

Starting from the forty-second battle, Conservation started to toss out all sorts of forbidden spells and high-level magic spells without any regard. Meanwhile, I started experimenting with taking “magic” out of my world.

In the forty-seventh battle, thanks to Adam and the others’ protection, my experiment finally succeeded. Although the success rate for teleporting a magic spell out of my world with me wasn’t very high, at only approximately 15%, every time I successfully teleported a magic spell out, it would cause Conservation’s mana pool to permanently drop.

During the fiftieth battle, after much practicing, my magic spell teleportation success rate now reached 30%. The wasteland that we chose to teleport back to in the Chaos Abyss had now become completely devastated rubble thanks to all the magic spells I teleported out there.

During the fifty-third battle, Conservation’s mana pool was now less than 20% of her maximum. It seemed as if victory was right before us. Losing nothing while completely defeating a Main God would be setting a new record in history.

During the fifty-fifth battle, Conservation suddenly cast a spell which had the form of a tan crown. All of us failed to stop this spell. Adam, who helped to block this spell for me, was instantly KO’d from full health. If it wasn’t for the fact that our healing efforts were quite swift and for his own powerful regenerative capabilities, he probably would have died for real… It seemed that we had been numbed by Conservation’s performance. She had still kept a trump card capable of overturning the situation. But next time, we would be even more careful and give her no more chances.

In order to let Adam recover, we rested for an entire day before starting the fifty-sixth battle. Conservation also received an opportunity to rest from this.

When we started the fifty-sixth battle, Conservation had recovered less than 10% of her mana. My theory had received yet another confirmation. Her mana regeneration abilities weren’t that strong. Her limitless mana usage was completely dependent on recycling all the mana that she used in a state of conservation.

In the sixtieth battle, Conservation’s mana pool was now lower than Margaret’s. Conservation made a critical mistake, so Adam successfully took revenge and nailed her right to her own throne.

However, she unhesitatingly started using magical self-destruction, and silently watched us, intending to take all of us with her. And so, we directly teleported out, and she stopped her self-destruction.

In the sixty-first battle, Conservation’s mana pool had fallen to SemiGod level. She was soon forced to the brink as she took a sword attack to her waist. Once again, she had to threaten us with self-destruction.

In the sixty-second battle, she immediately began by threatening to self-destruct. Was this supposed to be her way of showing us that she would rather choose death than submit?

In the sixty-seventh battle, the number of times that she had started self-destruction and then stopped had apparently caused Conservation’s soul to suffer permanent damage. She was already losing power level ranks. Her mana pool was now so low that analyzing her mana amount was no longer necessary.

In the sixty-eight battle, I informed her directly that with her current mana level, even a self-destruction would no longer be able to cause any fatal injuries to us, and that it would be a meaningless death and most humiliating end.

I also told the Undead Emperor that, as she knew, death wasn’t the end to any undead mage. As long as she died, I would use soul magic to drain her soul of every useful secret.

During the seventy-second battle, after forcing her to the brink too many times, Conservation no longer had any mana left. When I approached her as she was collapsed on the ground, she actually jumped up like a wild dog to bite me, leaving teeth marks on my arm. And so, I created a doghouse to put her in, and also put a dog chain on her.

In the end, we were unable to reach one hundred battles against her. I now imprisoned a Main God Undead Emperor who had no more mana left in my Yongye City’s magical prison. I was thinking about directly connecting her to my mage towers’ mana batteries, using countless tubes to drain every bit of her mana as it recovered. Perhaps my floating city would soon have an infinite mana battery if I did this.

As I hummed a song while cleaning up the battlefield, someone was commenting on me behind my back.

“He actually truly managed to defeat a Main God without any losses at all. This is Roland’s fighting style…”

“Yes, this is Roland, Yongye, the heartless and highly efficient combat strategist.”