The explosions vaporized the ice and made steam, obscuring Noah’s vision. This raised his anxiety levels to a new level as the unknown made him nervous. A moment later, he remembered he had air magic and just blew the steam away just in time for Mark to land on the ground. Finally, the steam cleared and what’s left of the ice became visible. Noah saw four small mounds of ice with part of the imps’ legs still in them. This made him breathe a sigh of relief. “Looks like that’s all that’s left of those fire imps.” He sighed again as he belatedly realized that maybe using fire against fire type enemies wasn’t the best idea. “Note to self, need more varied attacks.”
He walked closer to Mark who was still emitting gentle light from the healing and asked. “You good?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. That blue fire is messing with my healing somehow. It’s taking a longer time than usual to heal.”
Then the glow from his heal spell suddenly shined brighter and his healing noticeably quickened. “Neat, all my healing spells finally reached level ten and got an increase in raw healing power.”
“Makes you wonder why they only just now reached level ten, seeing how much we tend to use it.”
“Yeah, and we may never know.” Finished with his healing, Mark then stretched his arms and legs. “That feels much better. Now, let’s go find out why they’re spawning here.”
They ran around the limited area that the dungeon granted them as they discovered an invisible wall barring them from going further out beyond the small patch of hellscape they found themselves in. When they finally explored the area, they found nothing of note except a few scorched rocks jutting out of the ground.
Noah and Mark looked at each other and they both looked down at the ground at the same time. “Nowhere left to go but down,” Noah said as he started lifting huge amounts of earth and putting them all onto a single pile. Then they saw it, a bed of black coal, all ablaze and glowing red from the fire. In the center of it all was a strange flower that was blood red and looked a lot like a rose that was on fire. Noah immediately used identify on it.
Devil’s Bloom – Tier 2
You have found the cause of the spawning… Please proceed to extinguishing its flame…
Without hesitation, Noah conjured a waterball on top of the flower and released it. But instead of extinguishing the flame, it just became stronger. Then, a hand rose up from the ground beside the flower, followed by the body of an unusually muscular yet wingless imp. Once it was fully out of the ground, it looked around for a moment and its eyes focused on them, more specifically, on Mark. It roared and charged toward him as flames surrounded it.
“That’s just craaaaaptastic. Armor please!” Mark said as he wielded his sword and shield, preparing to meet the massive imp’s charge with his own.
Noah hurriedly recast [Ice-stone Armor] on Mark and backed away as he let Mark take the front line. He cast [Tread Coldly] hoping to slow it down, but his hopes were crushed as the imp’s feet similarly crushed the thin layer of ice on the coal bed and shrug off everything else. “Fuck!” He exclaimed as he saw it and Mark meet with it, obviously winning the exchange and pushing him back a few steps.
It then raised both of its arms, hands clasped and ready to hammer Mark into the ground, when his shield glowed and enlarged, fully stopping its attack, making it panic. Mark then summoned all his strength and deflected the imp’s enormous arms and stabbed it in the center of its chest. But his sword was stopped when it hit bone, only managing to fracture it. “Goddamnit!” Mark shouted as he rushed to pull out his sword and stab it again before it could regain its composure, when he heard Noah shout from behind.
“Get out of the way!”
He obliged and jumped away just in time to see a massive mound of earth fall from the sky, covering the imp and smothering the flames around its body. Noah then cast [Stone Tomb] and converted all the earth into stone, immobilizing the huge monster. Mark walked up to Noah who was breathing heavily and asked. “What now?”
Noah drank a few mana potions before replying. “Now I make the biggest bomb of my life, drop it on its head and hope to god that it’s enough to kill it.” He then started pumping all his mana into his skill [Fragmentation Grenade] and started to condense the resulting bomb turning the hydrogen into liquid. Unexpectedly, a few notifications popped up in his vision, almost causing him to lose control of the spell. His skills [Mana Manipulation], [Water Manipulation] and [Earth Manipulation] all leveled up to ten, giving him three similar choices each for the path he wanted to take the skill in. But, because of the circumstances, he didn’t have time to think about it as he noticed the stone tomb already showing cracks. He chose the control path in all his skills, immediately making it easier to condense his bomb, which ended up the size of his thumb.
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He could feel the sheer power emanating from the bomb floating on top of his hand. The mana upkeep was also through the roof as he had to maintain the liquid state of the hydrogen and the density of the stone. He ran towards the big block of stone and stopped a short distance away from it. Then he opened up a small hole right above where the imp’s head was and dropped the bomb in. He turned back and ran away, then detonated the small bead of destruction.
Released from the grasp of Noah’s mana, the hydrogen immediately vaporized and got in contact with the flame inside the stone enclosure.
BOOOOOOM
Noah and Mark watched as the boulder of stone was blown to pieces, causing Noah to cast a thick earth wall in front of them. He then blew the dust away with a gust of air and focused on what was left of the demon. Which there was barely any left. He peeked at his notifications and was surprised to see that it was actually also level seventy, like the previous imps, with one difference.
You have killed a Lesser Imp – lvl 70(Elite)
It was labeled as an elite mob.
“That thing was an elite!” Mark gasped from beside him.
“Yeah, no wonder it was so fucking tough to kill.” He said as he looked at his notifications and decided not to wait for the nightly tally. He’d leveled his main class three times and his subclass two times. Giving him a total of fifty-seven stat points, which he promptly put all into intelligence, bringing it to four hundred and nine points. He also noticed that he’d earned an achievement for their troubles. “I forgot that I had that other achievement that can enhance mana etching. Hmmm.”
Achievement [Plus Ultra!] Gained! (Consumable)
-You have killed an elite demon twice your level-
-Would you like to consume this achievement and gain the skill [Demon Hunter 1]?-
[Yes/No]
He mentally clicked yes, as he thought that there could only be good things to be gained from such a skill. Noah then looked at Mark and asked. “Did you get the achievement too?”
“Yup! Got the skill too.”
“Good, then let’s finish this dungeon and get out of here.” Noah said as he cast [Ice Tomb] on the flower, completely extinguishing its flames. Then he closed his hands and willed the frozen flower into pieces.
You have completed the dungeon [Lesser Imp Spawning Fields]… Rewards have been distributed…
After waiting for ten seconds, they were finally out of the dungeon with two levels and two medium grade mana stones as rewards. “Finally, we’re not dirt poor anymore.” Noah said in relief. He looked up at the sky and saw that the sun had started to set and said. “Now that’s what you call a productive day! Let’s head back home so I can start the planning part of project flying car.”
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A while later, they arrived at the parking lot of the apartment building and started cooking dinner. Noah sat down on an earthen chair and brought up the shop. He looked up some unenchanted frames for flying vehicles and saw that they were relatively cheap. Tier two frames were only at the fifty medium grade mana stones level. “Hmmm. That’s going to take a while. Might as well look up cultivation first.” So he did, and he found a packet about soul cultivation, which was apparently much harder than body cultivation as you had to somehow attune your soul to mana.
He followed the instructions in the packet and closed his eyes. Since mana came from and was stored in the soul, he had an idea. He turned [Mana Sense] on, focused on the mana that was being siphoned into the skill, and followed it to its origin. A moment later, he hit a wall and couldn’t follow the mana any further.
He tried to force his way through, but that only caused him to experience a sharp pain. “This must be that soul membrane thing that I read about.” He thought as he stopped trying to brute force it. Instead, he relaxed and focused again and rode the stream of mana from the skill. This time, it worked, and he arrived at his soul space.
From what the information packet said, the soul space was unique to every being. It was molded from a being’s experiences throughout their life, however short it may be and its appearance usually represented the place where they are most comfortable. In Noah’s case, his soul space came in the form of his room in his grandfather’s old home.
He looked around and went to the nearest bookshelf to pull out a book titled “catch” and opened it. Contrary to what he expected, he didn’t have to read the book page by page. Instead, memories were brought to the forefront of his thoughts and began to play. It was his first time playing catch with his grandfather. He fumbled the ball a lot of times, yet his grandfather was always patient. “He was always like that.” Then, he closed the book, ending the memory and put it back.
He then pulled out another book titled “First breakup.” It was the time when his first girlfriend dumped him and he’d been wallowing in self pity as he refused to go out of his room. His grandfather knocked on the door and told him to open it but he refused. So he broke it down, sat next to him on his bed and said. “You know, son, you’re going to look back at this moment some day and laugh. Laugh at yourself for crying, for me breaking down that door, even for liking that girl in the first place. But my point is, that heart wrenching feeling in your chest is going to fade and you’re going to have to decide how you’re going to rise above it. Are you going to cry yourself to sleep every night, wallowing in self-pity, or are you going to say “her loss.” Because that’s how I see it, son. I know, because I raised you myself. You’re a great guy Noah. Walk with your head held high and believe in yourself more.”
Noah closed the book and cut the memory off as he remembered that that conversation went on for over an hour. He wiped off a tear forming in his eye and put the book back where it belonged. “I miss you, gramps.” He thought to himself, as that book brought up all sorts of memories.
He shook his head and snapped himself out of it. “Not the time for this. Let’s continue with the cultivation.”