Stygian Mage

This was one of the combo spells that Soren had been practicing in these last few days. If he had just used his <Frost Domain> spell without any other spell supporting it, he wouldn’t have been able to freeze even one Beast. That was because the range of this spell was not much; it was one of those rare close-range spells. Other than that, it was also one of those spells which stayed in effect after being cast. It meant that once Soren would cast this spell, it would create a domain around him that would remain active for a certain amount of time. And during this time, Soren would be able to freeze anything inside that domain without any extra cost of Mana. This duration of the domain and the strength of the spell depended entirely on Soren’s ‘Intelligence’ stat. As for the radius of the domain, it depended on Soren’s proficiency level of the spell; with Soren’s current proficiency level, the radius of the domain was around eight meters.

Apart from this combo spell, Soren also had some other ideas related to the spells that he had right now. He just needed to practice more to make them usable in a battle; as none of them were exactly combat ready yet.

……

Seeing Soren kill so many Beasts in one go completely freaked out the other Rank 0 Initiators; especially when amongst those Beasts, there was also a Magic Beast. Fortunately for them, no one had gone down to fight the Beasts yet. Knowing that a Magic Beast could come anytime from now on, they all had unanimously decided not to go down for now. This decision had truly saved their lives as Soren wouldn’t have cared whether they were in the range of his spell or not.

After getting the desired effect from the combination of his spells, Soren simply turned around and went back to simulating his spell formations. But just as he was about to sit down again, a soft giggle sounded out from a nearby part of the wall. Looking towards the source of the sound, Soren saw a young girl with long black hair softly giggling while taking a glance at him; the hint of disdain she had in her eyes was very obvious for everyone to see. This young girl who looked to be around 20 years old was named Acima, a Rank 1: Layer 2 Spellcaster.

And the reason she was giggling right now was that she felt amused after seeing Soren get pissed off and finishing all the Beasts in one go. According to her, she could have achieved the same result with one of her powerful spells, but it would have cost her almost half her Mana to use it. Based on that, she had assumed that Soren was just an impulsive person who had wasted a huge amount of Mana for a stupid reason; hence, the disdain in her eyes. This misconception on her part was because she didn’t know what spell Soren had used at the end. Although she could recognize the first two spells, the last one was completely new to her; it was something that Soren had developed by himself, after all. This was not a spell that was sold in the market.

Ignoring her actions, Soren just went back to his simulations; he didn’t have enough free time to deal with stuff like this. As for Acima’s misconception about the amount of Mana he used for that spell combination, he didn’t care about it. In fact, it was better for him this way as he would have an upper hand against her if he ever had to fight her. So, blocking her out of his mind, Soren started working on his next spell formation.

…….

Soren’s perception of time slowed down considerably as he lost himself in creating the spell formations; of course, his <Elemental Sense> continuously worked, so he had the ability to easily react in case of any danger. The Rank 0 Initiators around him didn’t disturb him either as the situation at that part of the wall was well under control. Also, after the Withered Snake, no other Magic Beast came to pester Soren. Like this, time ticked by and without him realizing, Soren’s shift came to an end. Captain Hans had divided all the Rank 1 Initiators into three groups, with each group getting an eight-hour shift. So, now that Soren was done with this shift, he was free to anything he wanted for the next sixteen hours; unless the situation at the wall worsened even more. In fact, the current situation was already making all the Rank 1 Rogue Initiators, including Soren, a little uneasy, as they were beginning to realize that this Beast Tide might not be the usual one; the actions of the Beasts and the pattern of attacks were different.

But deciding not to focus too much on that issue until it was confirmed, Soren made his way down the wall while stretching his stiff body; also taking a long breath in the process. As for his loot from the Beast Wave, he had already asked one of the Rank 0 Initiators to bring everything to him. Based on the price of a whole Beast, Soren wasn’t much eager about selling them; of course, that was true only for the Rank 0 Beasts. The Withered Snake, on the other hand, Soren would never let that go as it would earn him quite a bit; he was quite low on crystals right now, after all.

Just as Soren went down from the last step of the staircase, the Initiator he had asked to gather his loot brought all the stuff to him. The price of a Storage Pearl wasn’t something that these Rank 0 Initiators could not afford. As such, this item was almost a necessity for them; regardless of how much it set them back in terms of Mana Crystals. 

Casually checking the corpse of the Withered Snake once, Soren nodded towards this Initiator and threw him a couple of Low-Grade Crystals. He then kept everything in his Storage Pearl and made his way towards the temporary shop of ‘Myriad Items’ that they had set up near the wall; this had made things easier for the Initiators who wanted to sell their loot from the Beast Tide.

After going through all the Beast corpses that Soren wanted to sell, the young shopkeeper gave him an offer of 20 Middle-Grade Crystals; the Withered Snake sold for 15 Middle-Grade Crystals, the rest came from the Rank 0 Beasts. Actually, this was only half the total value of the Beast corpses that Soren was selling. The reason for the decreased price was that Soren had decided to take out the Beast Cores for his own use. He had already decided to practice Potioneering, but for that, he needed ingredients. And Mana Cores were one of the most essential ingredients used in both concocting pills and brewing potions. This Beast Tide was truly a good chance for him to gather as many Cores as he wanted; where else would he have the ingredients come up to him willingly.

As for the Mana inside the Beast Cores, it had all dissipated around the wall. Because of that, the Mana concentration around the wall had currently increased to a whole another level. So much so that since the day the Beast Tide had started, a few Rank 0 Initiators had already broken through the bottlenecks that they had been facing and had increased their cultivation level. Of course, this density was still not enough to affect the bottlenecks of the Rank 1 Initiators. Even Soren who had blazed through the Rank 0 like it was nothing would see a massive drop in his cultivation speed from here on; that was if he could cultivate right now. Given the fact that he did not have enough data from the high-grade cultivation techniques, it would be nigh impossible for him to create a cultivation technique for himself. With what he had now, he could probably create a mediocre one, but he didn’t want that. And so, because of that, his cultivation had stalled for now.

The only salvation he had in this situation was that he at least had a way to increase his stats other than depending on the stat enhancement pills or potions.

……

With the free time that he had, Soren decided to head back to his hotel room and practice something that he had thought of while he was simulating the spell formations before. This thought had come to him when he had seen the Mana from the Beasts below the wall dissipating in the air. With his current situation, he could not cast his spell <Dead Rising> to seal the Beast Cores anymore. He didn’t want to reveal his ability as a Necromancer as he already knew about the bounty on his head; he had seen it after coming to Bellfalls. The bounty was on his alias, Zero, but he still didn’t really want to do anything that could connect him to it; this meant that he could not use his <Create Undead> spell either. Of course, this was just out of precaution, and if the situation really called for it, he would not hesitate to use everything he had. After all, the bounty was only an annoyance to him as he was well aware that none of the Initiators who could match his power were stupid, and thus, could realize the threat level of a person who received such a bounty.

So, to deal with the problem of dissipating Mana, he had thought of an idea. It was actually not so much of an idea but an application of Mana that he had been neglecting so far; after all, his whole focus had been on developing his Defense Spell and his cultivation technique. Moreover, Rank 0 Initiators would not be able to do it no matter how much they tried; it was only possible for Rank 1 and higher Initiators. This application was basically using Mana directly to do some things that would otherwise need a spell formation. A sealing spell was a very basic spell, but it still needed a spell formation. Now, Soren wanted to imitate the effect of that sealing spell without relying on the spell formation. Not only that, but Soren was hoping to try and imitate the effect of some other spells too; like cleaning spell, drying spell, temperature controlling spell, etc. If this method worked, he would then be able to apply the same concept to do many different things that would otherwise be impossible without spell formations.

Of course, Soren was sure that he was not the only one who had thought of this. This was proven to him before in the City-Guards barrack when he saw two Rank 1 Initiators talking to each other without letting others around them hear anything; the only reason Soren knew they were talking was that he had noticed their lips moving.

……

In the next few days, Soren followed a fixed routine.

When he was on the wall, he used his time to simulate the spell formations for his Defense Spell. Of course, he didn’t neglect his work there and acted whenever a Magic Beast decided to knock on his door. Because of that, he had earned quite a bit and had already recovered more than half of what he had spent to buy all the items before. Not only that, but he also used his ‘Devour’ there and absorbed all the Quintessence that these Magic Beasts had to offer; no one could see the Quintessence that he was absorbing so his secret was safe. And although the increase in his stats was not so drastic, it was still something.

As for when he was free, he practiced the method of using Mana to execute all those simple tasks. While he initially saw some development in it, it was progressing very slowly. But after his mastery level in ‘Mana Manipulation’ increased with all this practice, he started seeing some good progress. As of now, he was able to use just his Mana to clean anything, dry anything, seal the Cores, and transfer his voice directly to any person. With this, he could at least say that he had achieved a basic ability to utilize Mana.

…..

Time ticked by again. It had already been around twenty days since Soren arrived in Bellfalls.

A few days ago, the Beast Tide had suddenly intensified a lot as the number of Beasts had increased drastically; especially the number of Magic Beasts. Given this situation, Captain Hans had asked every Rank 1 Initiator to help out regardless of their shift rotation. Most of them agreed to it; Soren was one of them. This was a very good chance for him to gather the Beast Cores and absorb the Quintessence. And so, he was not going to let this chance slip by.

“Soren, it's starting right now,” A young lady looking around 28-29 years old with long brown hair and wearing a red low-cut dress reminded Soren as he was getting off the wall. Although the Beast Tide had intensified a lot, the Rank 1 Initiators still got breaks from time to time. And as they had just fought off the current wave which had around 14 Magic Beasts in it, it was free time for them now. There were a few flying Magic Beasts in this last wave, though, so everyone had a tough time killing them all; including Soren.

“Yeah, let’s go.” Soren nodded and replied to this young lady, named Lyris, whom he had gotten acquainted with a few days ago. She was walking on the path of traditional Necromancer, and so, she had to gather and use real corpses to create her undeads. If not for her Bloodline Talent which gave her resistance against Corpse Poison, she would have turned into a hideous creature by now.

These last few days, some of the Rank 1 Initiators had taken the initiative to get acquainted with each other. Not only that, but they had also been planning on doing a trade meeting. Being a powerful Spellcaster who had mowed down the Magic Beasts with his spells, Soren was obviously invited to this meeting. Of course, the criterion for the invite was not that. The invite was actually based on the decision that every Rank 1 Rogue Initiator had made in regard to a certain situation with Captain Hans in the last few days.

The place for the meeting had already been decided before and all the invited Rank 1 Initiators had been notified about it. And as Soren already knew his way around the town by now, he had no trouble reaching the place with Lyris.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------XXXXX-----------------------------------------------------------------------------