Noah woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of roasting meat. “That’s weird. I’m on the ninth floor. Why am I smelling meat?” He thought as he got up and followed the scent while holding his rumbling stomach. When he got to the door, he noticed it was open and there was a plate of meat on the floor with a weird-looking fan behind it. “Must be Mark’s way of waking me up for dinner.” He picked up the plate and brought it to his bed, but then had a thought. He pulled up his skills menu and mentally clicked on his skill [Analyze].
Analyze – lvl 11
-Analyze anything and everything in the world (results only limited by its level)-
“Hmmm…” He then went back to the door and picked up the weird-looking fan that was actually just a crude tube with a stand. He cast his skill on it to see what it would say.
Mana powered Fan – tier 1
-Crude fan powered by a low-grade mana stone-
“Hmmm. Nothing unexpected, but what if I…” Noah pumped one hundred mana into the skill and cast it on the fan again, but this time there was no notification. Instead, information about the fan and its inner workings streamed into his mind. Though because it was such a crude item, the amount of information was scarce and simple, which worked to his advantage. “Huh. So it's just a simple wind rune, a regulation rune, some circuits and an actual mana etched mana stone. Interesting.” He thought as he processed the information. “The mana etching is surprisingly intricate for a tier one item. But it is a simple mana gathering rune circuit. I should be able to imitate it to some degree.”
Noah went to his bed and took out a low-grade mana stone and played with it in his hand. He then activated his skill [Mana Manipulation] and drew out a small stream of mana from within him, forming it into tiny runes that almost perfectly copied the runes on the fan’s mana stone. A moment later, he heard trumpets sound in his mind, and immediately brought up his notifications.
You have acquired the skill [Mana Etching]
You have earned the title [Newbie Runesmith]
-Grants +10% increased experience to all rune related skills/spells-
Achievement [Hello Runes!] Gained! (Consumable)
-You are the first human to self-learn mana etching!-
-Would you like to consume this achievement and enhance your skill [Mana Etching]?-
[Yes/No]
Noah did a fist pump and a little celebratory dance as he read the notifications. “Mana etching is the way!” He thought as he continued to dance. Then he froze, realizing something. “Wait, didn’t it say anything and everything? Does that maybe include spells? HOLY SHIT! I need to try this out!” He hurriedly turned his radar on and headed for the nearest green dots, hoping that one of them was Mark. He arrived at the room where the boars lived and found that it was Aurora and Lily playing with the piglets.
“Have you guys seen Mark?” He asked, slightly out of breath.
Aurora looked over and said. “He’s out with Talal. Something about scouting out another dungeon for tomorrow's delve.”
“Damn.” After he said that, his eyes started to shine, as he looked at Aurora. “Say, beautiful big sister Aurora~, can you do me a small favor?”
Aurora’s hair stood on end and became defensive. “What are you planning?” She asked dubiously.
Noah panicked at seeing her reaction and immediately waved his hands wildly. “Nothing major, I promise! You just have to cast one of your spells while I stand close to you.”
Aurora let down her guard. “If that was all, why’d you have to say it like that? I’ll do it. Will any spell work?”
“Great! I’d actually prefer it if you used one of your weaker spells.”
“Fine, let’s go outside.”
So, they went outside with Lily and the boars in tow as they wanted to watch. Aurora picked a random tree and cast her weakest spell, [Air Blade]. Despite the same name to the spell, it was much bigger and more powerful than Noah’s version. He activated [Analyze] and [Mana Sense] in tandem in order to maximize his chances of getting something from this session. The first session didn’t bear any fruit though, so he asked Aurora to do it again and again, until finally he got the notification that his version of air blade had leveled up two times.
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“YES! IT WORKED!” Noah did a little celebratory dance again as he proved his theory correct.
Aurora cleared her throat and asked for an explanation, so Noah told her all about it. “Interesting. How about a new spell that you don’t have? What about, say, lightning?”
“Yes please!” Noah excitedly said. He’d been wanting to learn lightning spells ever since they did the gnome dungeon.
“Okay, now activate your skills and concentrate on how I form the lightning with my mana.”
Noah obeyed as he closed his eyes and focused on the information that his skills were giving him. A moment later, he heard a clap of thunder and information streamed into his brain. He saw how, under the close inspection of his skills, Aurora’s mana super charged the electrons, introduced and then rapidly created a positively charged channel. She then released the built-up charge and let the channel do the aiming for her.
Noah’s head ached. “I don’t think my mana manipulation is up to par yet. But maybe more sessions of watching lightning spells can close the gap.” So he asked Aurora to do it again, but this time, slower.
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Aurora obliged out of sheer curiosity. She wondered if watching her cast spells was really enough to learn them. So, she cast her skill [Lightning Bolt] again. Even though she had [Spark] as a more basic lightning spell, she wanted to see if Noah was truly as praiseworthy as Talal seemed to think. “Let’s see if you’re worthy of being accompanied by creatures like us.” Thinking to herself, she cast her skill twenty more times until Noah was satisfied. Then she watched on as the human in front of her started his first attempt at casting the lightning bolt spell.
It was slow at first and it took a couple of minutes of channeling before a tiny spark formed in the human’s hand, which immediately disappeared as soon as it came. It seemed like the human had lost his concentration. “He needs to work on that. But I guess it is understandable.” She saw Noah try again and this time, a small bolt of lightning formed in his hand. But he forgot to make the channel and the small bolt of lightning zapped his hand, eliciting a series of expletives to come out of his mouth. “Humans truly are funny.” She giggled as the human tried again.
This time, it was successful. Although it was small, the bolt of lightning struck the intended target tree and left a small scorched area. She clapped and couldn’t help but think. “Truly impressive. It only took him three tries to be successful at a spell that was above the basic level.”
“Looks like Talal was right about you.” She said.
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Noah’s ears perked up at that and looked over at Aurora. “What did he say about me?”
“All praises, I assure you.” She smiled as she saw the obvious ‘praise me’ expression on Noah’s face. “Anyway, did you get the manipulation skill for lightning?”
Noah looked at his notifications and, sure enough, he got both the lightning bolt spell and the lightning manipulation skill. Of course, he would need to practice with the spell and skill more since the long channel time would make any lightning spell useless in combat. “Oh, and I have to make more spells with just pure mana so I can level up the manipulation skill for it.” He thought as a plan for leveling up was born in his mind.
But while he was thinking, he felt a light tug at his shirt. He looked down and saw Lily with Prancer in her other arm. “What’s up Lily?”
She pointed at the scorch mark on the tree and asked “Will I be able to do that?”
“Hmmm. I’m not sure. But since you’re a tamer, maybe someday one of your pets will be able to do it.”
“Will Prancer be able to do it then?” She asked as she held Prancer closer to him.
He booped Prancer’s snout and couldn’t help but think about evolution and how it affected Talal. “When Talal evolved, he was wreathed in shadows. He was already obviously more inclined to shadows as a specialty well before that, so either he had an affinity for it or it was because of the spells he already knew.” He thought, then he remembered the store and its many information packets.
At a whopping five hundred mana stones, he bought it. The packet didn’t contain much information on the subject, but it did answer one of his questions. It said that evolution did indeed rely heavily on the affinity for a certain element, but it also said that experience was one other factor. “Hmmm.” He kept thinking, but decided that he was getting nowhere. He just didn’t have enough information.
“Okay Lily, I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but I think I know someone who can answer it better than me.”
“Who’s that big brother?”
“Future Lily! Who else better to answer that question than an experienced tamer? So, as soon as we find a low tier one dungeon, we’ll take you with us! You and Prancer get to level up and be as strong as us!”
She laughed awkwardly and said. “Can mama Emeri and the other piglets come too? I kinda already contracted all of them. hehe.”
Noah gawked at that. “That makes eight contracts, Lily…” For a few seconds, he just stared at the little girl with wide eyes when he finally got himself together and exclaimed. “You’re amazing! We’ll make a one-little-girl-army out of you yet!” Just as he finished saying that, they heard a familiar beating of wings and saw the silhouette of a giant black bird descending from the sky.
Mark hurriedly jumped off Talal’s back as soon as they landed. “I will never get used to that, ever.” He complained with his legs still shaking. He took a deep breath to calm himself down, looked at Noah, and started speaking. “We found an earth element dungeon and a water element one. Talal scanned them with his skill and the earth type turned out to be a low tier one while the latter was mid tier one. The former doesn’t have much use for us, but it would probably be a good practice dungeon for Lily. It’s probably time for her to start leveling anyway.”
“Great! We were actually just talking about that. Lily contracted all the boars, including Emeri, so I think it’s time for a test.” Noah replied.
Mark looked at Lily and couldn’t help but be amazed. “That’s eight contracts… That can’t be normal, right?”
“Exactly what I said! And she’s only level three!”
“…” Mark was speechless thinking of the implications. A moment later, he shook his head and said. “Okay, let’s make you a one-girl-army. What do you say Lily?”
“Yes please, sir!” she replied excitedly.
“Okay, your first order is to sleep and wake up first thing tomorrow morning for your first leveling session. Got it?”
“Sir yes sir!”
With that, they all headed for the apartment building to sleep the night away. One of them more excited than the others.
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The next day…
“Big brother Noah! Big brother Mark! Wake up! Let’s go to the dungeon!” Lily knocked on their doors incessantly, excitement practically oozing from her voice.
Noah woke up and smiled. “She’s really excited about this.” He got up and went to open the door when he heard a harder and louder knock replace the lighter knocks from Lily.
“Rise and shine Mr. Avatar! We’ve got a dungeon to get to!” He heard Mark’s voice come from the door.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake!” Noah replied
And so, they went up to the tenth floor, where Talal and Aurora were already up and chatting. Now all together, they went outside to the parking lot and got on Talal’s back. An hour later, they arrived at the dungeon and Noah immediately cast [Analyze] on it with a hundred mana added on.
Earth Goblin Tribe Dungeon – Tier 1(low)
“There we go. It took one hundred mana but at least we won’t be going in blind into a dungeon ever again.” He looked at Lily and asked for the final time. “Are you ready Lily?”
“Yes!”