After passing through the portal, Sonus could feel as he seemed to be wildly pushed through a very narrow passage.

Upon landing on the other side, Sonus had to spend a few seconds to recover from the rather strange feeling that the experience had caused to bubble up in the pit of his stomach.

Sonus could faintly feel that the area he was in now was nowhere near Earth, seeming as if it were a completely disconnected space. Looking around himself with caution, Sonus began to slowly move forward after steadying himself.

As he glanced around, Sonus realized that the world around him seemed to contain a faint energy, as if the world were full of the energy that was used to fuel his power, an energy that The System seemed to label as mana. However, aside from this energy, Sonus could faintly feel a couple other energy sources.

Thinking on it, Sonus figured these other energy sources had to be related to the other classifications of powers, those of a Fighter, Long-Range combatant, Assassin, and Tank.

This energy being within the portal caused Sonus to faintly gain the feeling that he could release more energy within the portal than within the actual world. Along with this, Sonus felt as if he were slowly absorbing the energy of the portal as he rested within it, his mana capacity seeming to slowly rise.

The portal seemed to be shaped into a cavern, large passageways in front of Sonus, with some parts branching out from others. As he walked through, paying attention to his surroundings while feeling the aura of mana around him, Sonus slowly created a theory.

Sonus noticed that certain branches of the cavern had more mana than others, this led to him gaining the belief that the pathways with more mana contained stronger monsters while the areas with less mana had weaker monsters.

Deciding to test this theory, Sonus headed for the tunnel with the weakest mana concentration. He decided that if his theory was right, it would be best to gain more combat experience through weaker monsters before slowly working his way up to the stronger ones.

As he walked through the new cavern, Sonus noticed that along with the decrease of energy, the cavern itself seemed to have a far more dilapidated appearance. This gave his theory more credence, it would only make sense for the stronger of the creatures to gravitate toward the stronger areas, finding themselves evolving far more rapidly there.

After walking through this new corridor for only a few meters, Sonus already encountered his first monster; however, it wasn't a single monster but rather a group of them.

When Sonus first decided to make it his lifelong goal to kill the Shuten-doji, he spent all of his time researching mythologies to learn the weaknesses of different creatures, hoping that this would have some affect on the mythological creatures that appeared from the portals.

This, naturally, led to him having a far deeper understanding of mythologies than the average person.

With this experience, it took him not time at all to realize what the creatures before him were - that being Draugr, beings of Norse mythology meant to symbolize the undead, beings typically known for guarding treasure.

As he looked at these soldiers, Sonus rapidly went through his memory to remember what the weaknesses of these creatures were. It took little to no time at all for him to remember their most obvious weakness of fire. However, having no access to an easily usable source of that, as well as remembering that he was currently within a cave, Sonus decided against that.

Eyes shining with a cunning light, Sonus slowly crept toward the group. Yet, as his focus rested solely on the draugr, he forgot to pay attention to his surroundings. This led to him making the simple mistake of kicking a rock he hadn't noticed, sending it skidding to a stop barely a feet from himself.

This led to the draugr's attention being directed at him, their eyes seeming to be lifelessly staring at him. As their attention focused on him, their seemingly dazed expressions became far more fierce, their figures rushing towards him in unsuppressed fury.

Sonus figured that they likely viewed him as an outsider who had come to take their treasure, somebody that they naturally needed to eliminate as soon as possible.

As Sonus seen the draugr rushing toward him, he began to panic at the sight. However, after having trained his willpower for an entire month, Sonus wasn't someone who would be weak-willed enough to stay frozen as death approached him.

After a moment of shocked panic, Sonus quickly calmed himself before reacting. Dashing backwards while keeping his eyes focused on the draugr, Sonus grabbed the harp he had strapped to his back. Placing it on the ground, he began to quickly pluck at the strings.

The song he played was one that he had created during the previous month, a relatively weak one. This music wasn't even really a song, rather it was just him playing in his boredom. The music had an affect of turning the music notes summoned by the playing of the instrument into small little knives that flew off, attacking whatever Sonus willed them to.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The reason he had chosen this song was that it was far less energy intensive than his stronger songs such as Hope; Sonus figured that against a creature as weak as the draugr, it would be far better to not waste his energy on a more powerful song.

While this song was less energy intensive, there were also negatives to it. Those being, that while the knives created used very little mana, they were far less realistic than most of his other songs.

The only reason Sonus dared to use them was that these creatures had little to no intelligence, this meant that what they witnessed heavily effected their belief. Witnessing what appeared to be knives flying at them, they of course believed the knives to be real.

As the knives flew out, Sonus' fingers continually plucked. With each new string, a new wave of knives would come flying out. This led to the eventuality of the draugr being surrounded, their advance being halted by the now far more pressing matter of resisting the knives currently flicking down to stab at them.

However, while the draugr tried to resist, Sonus played at such a rate that for every one knife the draugr would manage to destroy, another three would take its place.

This scenario continued until the draugr finally couldn't resist any longer, repeatedly being stabbed through by the knives. Eventually, the draugr fell to the ground, their bodies disappearing into motes of light once dead.

After a moment, Sonus watched as these motes of light seemed to be absorbed into him, turning into a pure source of mana. As soon as this occurred, a notification from The System popped up.

"Congratulations! User has killed the F-ranked creature 'Draugr', the User has now gained .8 points of mana."

This message repeated four times, signifying an increase for every draugr that Sonus had killed. However, Sonus noticed that not every draugr gave him the same amount of mana.

This led Sonus to the belief that the amount of mana gained from killing a creature wasn't based on their race, but rather it was probably a certain percentage of the mana contained within their body.

This led Sonus to the belief that if he were to fight some of the stronger draugr that would undoubtedly be within the passageways with more mana, he would gain more mana than from these ones.

However, Sonus still continued down the passageway he had been walking down, choosing to hone his combat skills first. This was because even though Sonus had managed to kill the last group of draugr, he had still been startled upon them rushing him.

While Sonus didn't feel as if there was anything wrong with his reaction considering he had never been in life or death combat before, he still felt that it would be best to train this type of reaction out of him.

So, with steady steps filled with a certain confidence they didn't previously contain, Sonus headed down the passageway in preparation for his next battle.

It didn't take much time at all for Sonus to run into another group of draugr, this one being a bit larger with eight members, yet Sonus felt they were all still around the same strength as the previous group.

This time, Sonus paid close attention to his surroundings, preparing a sneak attack on the group.

While Sonus still played the same music as previously, he decided to try and improvise a bit. Instead of plucking a string to summon a blade, Sonus tried to strum the string, wondering if the sound lasting longer may instead summon a larger, stronger blade.

The draugr upon hearing the sound of music, glanced up toward Sonus before rushing toward him.

Sonus' fingers didn't even pause in their movements, yet he did feel a jolt run through him at the terrifying sight of undead soldiers rushing at him, faces filled with the desire for blood.

However, Sonus still felt that this was an improvement, the fact that he reacted so slightly to the sight left him feeling a degree of satisfaction.

Yet, Sonus quickly stamped this out, bringing his full focus back to the group of undead that were currently rushing toward him.

It seemed that Sonus' thought process was correct considering that, the longer he let the sound of the note ring out, the bigger the blade seemed to become.

After the blade became a longsword, Sonus let it fly out, heading directly for the draugr rushing toward him. The draugr showed no reaction toward the blade, their movement not stopping in the slightest.

This didn't surprise Sonus, the draugr truly appeared to be monsters rather than sentient beings, their reactions seeming to be entirely based on instinct.

As he watched, the longsword flew out, slashing down and cutting off the legs of two draugr.

What surprised Sonus however, was that instead of reacting to this sudden change, the draugr continued marching toward him. Even the draugr with their legs cut off continued forward, using their arms to drag their bodies forward.

Controlling the sword, Sonus quickly slashed out at the draugr from behind, decapitating one and cutting another in half.

Sonus felt it as the bile slowly rose up his throat at the sight, his body suddenly feeling ill. However, Sonus quickly suppressed this, deciding he would deal with his sudden urge to puke once the fight had concluded.

With a deep breath to bring some clean air into his lungs, Sonus allowed the sword to continue forward once more. Due to Sonus' distracted state, the sword missed the target of decapitating the next draugr, instead only managing to slice off one of its arms and cutting into its side.

By this point, the draugr had already reached a range of four meters from Sonus. As he seen this, Sonus recollected himself and played a note in his panic.

As a result of his panicked state, the note Sonus played had the affect of sending out a wave of sound, knocking the draugr back, their backs slamming against the ground. The sound wave was so strong that upon hitting the ground, the draugr's internal organs were pulverized.

Sonus sat there in shock, a look of fear on his face. If he hadn't subconsciously sent out that soundwave, he would've been swarmed by the group of draugr.

This let him know his biggest weakness, that being how reliant he was on his instrument. Needing to sit still and play his instrument while monsters rushed him put him in a rough spot.

Sonus decided that he would spend his time within this portal to train his power, using it to play his instrument while physically moving around. He realized that this strategy wouldn't work on smarter opponents as they would target the instrument instead of himself, but he figured it would work for weaker portals.

So, Sonus slowly explored the caverns, going from regions with low energy to higher ones, baiting the monsters to chase him as his instrument played on its own, slowly killing them.

This led to Sonus using far more energy, but it had the tradeoff of being far safer than Sonus' previous method. By the time he had finally made it to the boss room, Sonus no longer froze up at the sight of enemies rushing toward him, nor did he feel the need to vomit at the sight of gore.

Stats

Ability: Music

Affinity: 'S+'+

Power: 'D+'+

Mana: 220/220