Stygian Mage

Soren continued on through the jungle after his fight. He had rested before for a while; collected the cores from the Beasts; cultivated with the Mana released by them and then continued on his way.

While collecting the Beast Cores before, though, he got one nice surprise but also brought him one small disappointment. The pleasant surprise he got was that he found out that his <Dead Rising> spell could seal the Mana inside a Beast Core and could very well work the same as those Core sealing spell. Soren could now easily gather Beast Cores with their Mana sealed inside, which would sell for a lot more than its counterpart. Of course, this also meant that Soren had to give up on cultivating using the Mana released by the Beasts.

But the disappointment was that after finding out about this, he immediately wanted to use the spell on the dead Layer 9 Beast but…he was unable to do so as he had no Mana left and by the time he could recover enough to use the spell, the Mana inside that Beast’s Core would all be released in the air.

As he had no other option left and didn’t have any way to speed up his Mana recovery, he just used that Beast’s Mana for cultivation.

His CP had now reached 39%

The Mana from three Beasts made his CP increase quite a bit. In total, his gains were: 1 Layer-9 Beast Core, 1 Layer-7 Beast Core, 1 Layer-8 Beast Core, 1 Layer-7(Mana Sealed) Beast Core, 1 Layer-8(Mana Sealed) Beast Core, and an increase of 22% in his CP.

The main thing he gained from this fight was the ability to seal the Mana inside the Beast Core after killing it. He didn’t know if it would work on the Intelligent beings or not but at least he didn’t have to worry about buying a Sealing Spell for the Beast Cores now.

…………

Acid…Needles!

Soren cast his spell while silently hiding in a dense bush. He once again felt the same draining sensation as before as the spell used almost all his Mana reserve. A hard but extremely thin needle formed in front of him and gave off a deadly vibe.

Slowly releasing the breath he was holding till now, he aimed the needle at the Beast in front of him, trying hard not to make any sound.

The Beast in front of him was a Layer-9 Beast which was called ‘Antebursee’. The Beast was an herbivore and was quite lazy in nature. It had a low height with thick 4 legs. Its fur had a dull white color which looked dirty in many places. The most interesting feature it had was its long snout through which it sucked in the small fruits or leaves hanging high on any tree. Though the feature that amused Soren the most was its super short tail; such a short length tail was only useful for hiding its ass-hole—a fact that made Soren laugh despite himself.

According to the info Soren had, this Beast was not combative in nature and sometimes even ignored if someone attacked it face on. Soren knew that this Beast liked to live in peace and always acted alone, so he made a simple plan to end its life. He didn’t want to enter into a skirmish with it even though he was confident that he could win easily. He wanted to kill this Beast silently just to see if he could do it; at the same time he could also do another test run of his new spell and see how it worked on higher level opponents.

He was sure of the spell’s effect and that it would kill the Beast; it was after all a Rank 1 spell. But he wanted to see the detailed effect this spell had on a higher level opponent. And since he couldn’t use it in a head-on fight, as casting this spell alone would sap almost all his Mana, he could only do it in a stealthy way.

……..

The Acid Needle flew at the Beast at a high speed while maintaining its stealth form. The spell in itself was a small needle so it was pretty easy to use a stealth weapon. Soren watched silently as the needle pricked the Beast’s right hind leg. He wanted to check the spell’s effect so he had purposely missed the head area; that would kill the Beast very soon.

The physical attack that the spell possessed was pitiful and all that the Beast felt was a mosquito biting its leg, after which it just waved its short tail to shoo-away that ‘mosquito’. Soren was once again attracted by that short tail swinging around and had to tell himself to focus on the important thing.

The Beast might have thought it was just a mosquito but unfortunately for it….this ‘mosquito’ contained a deadly poison.

Soon, the Beast felt its hind leg go numb and it stumbled while trying to eat its food. It tried to stabilize itself but completely failed to do so. It looked back towards the place where the mosquito had bitten it and saw that the place was slightly swollen but it didn’t look any different than a normal mosquito bite.

Soren’s spell <Acid Needles> worked from the inside so there was no visible effect on the outside. And truly, inside the Beast’s body was a completely different scenario.

The spell’s effect slowly corroded the Beast from inside, giving it an excruciating pain. Before, when Soren had used it on that guy, the spell had killed him so quickly that he couldn’t feel any pain. But now, the Beast was strong enough to stay alive under the spell’s effect for a while, and that in turn became the reason for its heart-rending pain.

The Beast tried to thrash around as much as it could but with its hind legs turning numb, it could only move around weakly.

The spell’s effect had now spread in the Beast’s entire body and was moment’s away from taking its life.

Mooooo!!!!

The Beast let out its last pitiful wail as it slowly drifted off to sleep forever.

Thud!

Soren came out of the bush as the Beast fell on the ground with a dull and loud sound. He first checked his surroundings and after confirming he was alone, went towards the Beast. He had used up almost all his Mana so he couldn’t afford to relax right now; a fact which also meant that he couldn’t use his <Dead Rising> spell on this Beast to seal its Mana Core anymore.

Checking the surroundings once more, Soren started his cultivation. He brought out his Grimoire and used ‘Devour’.

His CP started rising once more

…

…

This time it reached 46% before slowly coming to a stop.

He then swiftly took out the Beast Core, cleaned his knife using the Beast fur, and then went on his way; leaving the dead Beast for the predators to finish. This had become like a routine work for him now and had become really good at it.

……….

Soren decided to take a rest for a while, recovering his Mana and then continue again. So, he went to look for a safe and concealed place to hide into.

He looked for quite a while but finally couldn’t find one. During this search of his, he sometimes had to slowly walk away when he would encounter a pack of high-level Beast, and sometimes he just had to run away fast when they would notice him; resulting in him getting a few injuries. Of course, these injuries were not that serious and would not kill him if he just let it recover after applying some medicine and bandages.

This search resulted in one more realization which made him curse out loud, but he didn’t since that wasn’t a smart thing to do in a jungle.

The realization was about his gun. Although he was aware that his gun wouldn’t work well on high-level opponents, he didn’t know it would be this useless. What made him want to curse out loud was that he had bought quite a few bullets just before coming to the jungle and now it became a total waste of crystals. And since his gun had become useless, he had no choice but to just use it as a means of distraction.

………

After continuing like this for some time and struggling to keep moving, he finally found a place to rest and recover; it was a tree hole. The tree itself was quite huge and had a hole inside it, with the entrance being at some height.

Soren would have to struggle quite a bit to reach the entrance of the hole but was actually glad that it was so high; that would decrease the possibility of any Beast finding it and coming in.

Already decided to use this place, Soren first threw his backpack inside and then climbed in himself. The hole had a certain depth from the entrance, and as he was not athletic at all even after the increase in his physical stats, maybe even a bit clumsy at times, he flipped over and fell down hard on his ass.

A muffled sound of pain came from inside the hole. Coincidentally, it was very similar to the sound that ‘Antebursee’ made when it was dying.

Soren started checking out the dark hole while rubbing his ass, trying to ease the pain; it was still stinging from the fall. Inside the hole was actually quite spacious, enough for 3 adults to spread their limbs comfortably. Soren was quite happy to find the place; he even forgot his pain due to this. He was now thinking of making this his base just like he had made one before in that cave in the outskirts.

At that time, he was still weak and a complete beginner. But now, he was much stronger and had more experience in dealing with things. His main reason for coming in the jungle this time was to earn Mana Crystals. The problem with the ‘Abbate Family’ was just an addition to that.

He had gathered a few Beast Cores now but it was still not enough. According to what he knew, the prices of the Beast Cores he had right now would sell for a total of around 1000 Low-Grade Mana Crystals.

Beep!

Soren heard the ‘Beep!’ and took out his communicator from the backpack. It was a message in the ‘Wandering Wolves’ messenger from Smiley. He aside his backpack and then sat on the wooden ground with his back supported by the wooden wall.

…

…

After reading the message, Soren fell into deep thought.

The message was that the ‘Wandering Wolves’ were now planning to go to that Rank 2 Swordsman’s vestige very soon. Other Rogue Initiators were already gathered there and now, they were in a constant conflict with the Initiators from the Families. The Families had an upper hand right now though, as they had more high-level people and were much stronger than their counterpart.

…..

The ‘Wandering Wolves’ had finally decided to go to the vestige. The message was simply to notify Soren about the plan and also contained a map with coordinates for the meeting place if he wanted to come.

Soren opened the map and checked out the coordinates and was a little surprised to see where it was. After referencing it with the map that Isaac had created, he was finally sure of it.

The meeting place was very near to the lake that he had been to before. It was the place where he first developed the ‘scan’ feature of Isaac and just after that he had gotten into a fight which resulted in him almost dying and some drastic consequences for him and Isaac. Looking at the map, he was once again reminded of that time and how desperate he was in that fight. He had thought for sure that he would die and that’s why he attacked the Beast in that suicidal way. In the end, he only survived because of what Isaac did.

Soren kept looking at the message for a while as he remembered what had happened that day. He then opened his backpack and took out a black colored mask that he had bought before. The mask was big enough to cover his whole face and had cat-like features. Soren stared at the cat mask for a while and then put it inside the backpack again.

He had bought the mask before coming to the jungle while he was buying the supplies. He had to buy it anyway so he just bought it together with the supplies.

Soren thought about it for quite some time and finally decided to not go now. He might go later after gathering some more Beast Cores and….breaking through to Layer-9. He wanted to increase his power some more before meeting the group. His CP had already reached 46% and he only needed to kill a few more Layer-9 Beast and absorb their Mana to breakthrough to Layer-9.

…..

It was already evening and sun was also ready to sleep, so he just decided to rest and practice his Mana control in the tree hole. He had some plans for his development like ‘Simultaneous Casting’ and also wanted to use that—where he controlled a spell projectile after releasing it, without any self-damage.

Soren first took out some dried meat and ate it together with some spices that he had bought this time. A dried meat in the jungle was tasteless as it was so he wanted to make it a little bit more enticing to eat.

He drank some water after eating and then started on his work. He first practiced Mana control and made his Mana do different stuff. He also tried to infuse his Mana with different elements but so far, he was only able to add ‘Ice’ and ‘Darkness’.

…

After finishing with that, he did some research on ‘Simultaneous Casting’ and how he could achieve it. There was not much information about it in the books he had read before and was only mentioned in some as an afterthought. So, he had to research it on his own and develop a skill out of it.

One way he could think of was to divide his thought process and cast two spells together but….he had no idea how to divide something that he knew nothing about.

This was different than multi-tasking as this required full attention on every spell. He realized he was very far from achieving what he wanted. Maybe he would get an inspiration someday or maybe someday he would be able to do it by luck but for now, he just had to continue banging his head against the wall and continue his research on it.

…

Next on his list was the ability to control the spell projectiles after releasing it. This ability had made him the last one standing in multiple fights now. He really wanted to perfect this ability to a point where he didn’t have to suffer from the damage afterward. It was the same as ‘Simultaneous Casting’ though. He had no idea where to begin with this and how to develop it further. He even had no idea how he could do this and if he was the only one who could do it.

…

Isaac, make different folders for these researches and store them separately.

“Yes, Master. “

Finished with that, he decided to study some of his spells. He had already mastered most of his spells but a few of them were still left. The one he wanted to master right now was the <Fireball> spell. As that would not only decrease the Mana cost of the spell, it would also free up a slot in his Stygian Grimoire.

Making his decision, he started his study on <Fireball>. This spell had very little use for him till now, as the amount of Mana it took to cast this spell for Soren was not at all comparable to the power it showed afterward. Still, Soren wanted to finish with this and then move on to his other spells. And since he was giving his full attention on this spell, it didn’t take him long to achieve some results.

“Spell Mastery increased. Fireball – Level 8/10.”

He didn’t stop there though and continued after dismissing the message. This time, he also started studying about his Innate spell <Dark Bolt> together with ‘Fireball’. He had researched on it quite a bit before and because of his relationship with ‘Darkness’ element, it became much easier for him to increase his mastery in this spell; at least compared to <Fireball>.

He studied the properties of the spells the whole night with some breaks in between and for some chats with Isaac about normal stuff; just for some mind refreshments.

Isaac, you really should learn some music of this world….If there is any….

You can become my music player then!

“……..”

“Going into hibernation mode to recover….”

Just kidding-Just kidding! Haha….ha…

……….

The night went on and soon the sun peeked over the horizon, slowly painting the sky in its color.

Soren also received the messages he waiting for.

“Spell Mastery increased. Fireball – Level 10/10.”

“Spell Vessel Assimilated. Innate Spell Learned: Fireball – Level 10/10.”

“Spell Evolution Possible”

……..

“Spell Mastery increased. Dark Bolt – Level 10/10.”

“Spell Evolution Possible”

He then delightedly dismissed the messages. One work was complete and now, he could work on the other stuff without these things on his mind. He opened his status to check on things before going to sleep as he was really tired and wanted to get some sleep before heading out to get some more Cores.