Combat Dungeon B
You have chosen to claim rewards, you will not be able to continue further rounds.
You have successfully completed 3 rounds of +10 - +15 difficulty.
Congratulations.
Combat Dungeon B
Calculating Rewards
Bonuses:
Difficulty
Time
Solo
Reward Tier: Highest
Sweet.
Combat Dungeon B
Rewards
[E - Epic] Mask of the Recluse
[E - Epic] Ring of the Sensible Hunter
[E - Epic] Skill Upgrade: Scan Literature
1,000,000 Tutorial Credits
In a very familiar room, Felix walked forwards and retrieved his rewards from the table, starting as always, with the Tutorial Credits.
Tailoring to higher level means more credits? Sweet.
Touching the next item, another non descript palm sized disc, Felix didn't even have the chance to identify it.
Ding You have successfully upgraded the General Skill: [Scan Literature (Epic) Scan the entire contents of any form of literature that remains within 4.42 meters of your person (increased based on perception) for more than 10.6 seconds (decreased based on your intelligence, increased based on rarity and grade). This skill requires you have some way of memorizing, transcribing or storing the scan of the book. Some books may resist being scanned in this way. Some details, such as those in creeping ink books, auto-updating tomes, and sentient books will be lost. This skill is upgradeable.]
HAH. That is kind of ridiculous. I had been sad about my Mind Palace library being so bare, now I just have to walk through a library and suddenly, I have it all.
The next item on the table was a ring made of a dark brown wood with a slight red tint to the grain.
[E - Epic] Ring of the Sensible Hunter
While equipped, the parts that have any value in an E grade corpse you examine for more than a few seconds will glow with distinct colors. Parts of the corpse that may be hidden will still appear and focusing on a specific color will hide the others. This glow is only visible to the wielder of the ring.
Huh, that's cool I guess. I expect and hope it matters more the higher level the prey are. Kinda wish I had this before leaving the Macerodos corpse behind, oh well.
Felix equipped the ring which fit snuggly on his left index finger.
I wonder how many rings I can equip. I am sure it's not 10 or more, that would be insane, maybe 4? I have the angel ring on my right ring finger, diving ring on my right index finger and the hunter's ring on my left index finger. That would leave my left ring finger? Why do the rings only fit on those fingers though?
The last item was a completely white mask with no features whatsoever.
[E - Epic] Mask of the Recluse
While equipped, the wielder's level when identified is reduced to the desired value. The wielder also appears less interesting, to any that gaze upon them. Finally, the wielder may choose to change the appearance of their face to a random one. These effects only apply to those that are the same or lower level to the wielder. This mask is invisible to all while worn.
Channel mana into the mask to increase the visible level and pull mana from the mask to decrease the visible level. Tap both temples twice to randomize your appearance and once to disable this effect.
Huh. I can't even be mad that The System called me a recluse, I love this thing. This will make it so my level isn't unknown anymore it is simply a normal value. Though I suspect when I run through town at speed I will be plenty interesting.
Seems a little odd these weren't tailored to combat rewards like the last one was, but I'm not complaining.
Combat Dungeon B
All Rewards Collected
Would you like to leave this room?
Warning: You may only remain in this room for a maximum of 15 minutes.
Yes.
No.
No. Time to try and fix this stupid hole in my mana.
Felix spent about 5 minutes trying to get his mana to stop leaking out of him without him manually holding it still. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out any way of doing so. He did manage to optimize how much he held to make sure it didn't leak and managed to cast three spells concurrently while he held his mana inside of him. Without holding his mana, the last time he checked, he could only cast three at once so he suspected he could now potentially cast four were he not preoccupied.
He spent the last 10 minutes in the room draining all of his mana batteries to try and replenish some of his mana.
Felix watched the timer for the tutorial count down and waited for the last second before trying something new. He inhaled as deeply as possible and held his breath just in case, then jumped into the air and cast a large sphere of mana around himself about two meters in diameter. He removed the connection with the sphere from the spell form so it couldn't yank on his mana and just hoped that he had shoved enough into it to work.
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Suddenly Felix felt as though the gravity had multiplied and he fell to the ground on his back, except his body smacked against the sphere instead of the ground. Felix recovered quickly and looked out of his mana construct at the ocean rushing by.
It stuck me outside of the cave? Maybe the sphere wouldn't fit in the cave so it stuck me the closest it could get? Shit, I wanted a minute to tune this thing. Oh well, guess it's time to learn how to fly.
Felix and his ball of mana rocketed upwards through the sea for some period of time before the light suddenly brightened and the sphere of mana with Felix inside was launched into the air. Felix ripped the mana sphere apart, reabsorbing as much of it as he could and cast Feather Fall to lower himself to the surface of the water at a much slower speed. As he fell, he tested out a few variation of Gust to push himself in the direction he was trying to go.
He settled on a channeled force variation with much more power than the standard one which made him essentially fly, or glide, as he was slowly descending. He channeled more mana into Feather Fall making his descent even slower and then some into the force spell to increase his speed.
He didn't get very far, but he saw a small sliver of land on the horizon. As he was a few meters above the water still, he cast another sphere of mana around himself and dropped to the surface. Felix spent 20 minutes or so experimenting with different spells and positions to get it so that the ball didn't spin as he traveled.
He spent another hour trying to make it work before giving up and just creating a plane of mana and surfing on it. He had to fiddle with the amount of force propelling him and his balance for 10 minutes or so before managing to find a good rhythm. It was immensely helpful that the water was relatively calm.
Felix guided himself to the north west, towards the second to last dungeon. He stopped on a small peninsula off of the swamp biome that was luckily covered in sand. Due to the ocean breeze, it didn't overly smell like butt from the swamp either, making it a perfect stopping point to camp for the night.
Felix wasn't too worried about anything harming him while he slept because he was a much higher level than anything or anyone else he had seen so far. He found an open area on the sand where he could sleep and set himself up for the night. He did not pull out his bed or bedding though as he didn't want it to get wet, sandy or damaged from anything.
Before he slept, Felix sat down and fiddled with the Mask of the Recluse. He set it to show him at level 35 with a random face. Not too low to be underestimated, but not so high as to stand out, at least he hoped. He was guessing based on the highest level he had seen other people at so far.
Next, he started meditating, fully entering his soul space this time, to properly evaluate the damage to his soul. His soul was mostly just tender and sore, not actually scarred or wounded in any way. The outer layers of his soul around his left side were looser, they were less attached to his soul and didn't feel as dense as the rest. It reminded Felix of a bump that might appear if someone had hit their head.
Remembering his one lesson in souls, Felix pulled on that side of his soul and compressed it as much as he could. He expected doing so would be painful, but rather it felt satisfying in a way he couldn't quite compare, mostly because it was a feeling originating from his soul. He didn't want to leave everything else behind so he worked on compressing his entire soul at once, which was a slightly uncomfortable feeling all around. When he compressed the injured parts of his soul back to where it normally was, it felt satisfying, pushing any harder was like flexing a muscle causing slight pain.
Felix compressed his soul and held it for 5 hours. He wasn't timing out a specific amount of time, he just held it until he was tired and decided to sleep. After the first 30 minutes, holding his soul compressed didn't take much focus so he pulled out the D tier cube and started funneling ambient mana directly into it as fast as he could. His concentration slipped a few times, but he almost immediately caught himself and hoped it wouldn't make too much of a difference to the results.
When Felix grew tired that night, he stopped meditating, stowed the D tier cube and laid back on the sand. His soul felt much more even, though he could still feel the soreness on his left side. Either due to natural healing or because his soul compression helped somehow, he also noticed his leaking mana had mostly been staunched. His mana regeneration now completely surpassed the rate he was leaking mana, which meant he could sleep without worrying about waking up completely empty. Admittedly, he wasn't sure what would happen if he ran out of mana while he slept, he figured nothing, but for all he knew it could spell imminent doom.
Felix woke the next day to the sun rising over the horizon. His soul was tender but barely noticeable with no soreness and his mana had completely stopped leaking as far as he could tell. With full resources, he set out for the day.
First, he constructed a plane of mana about 6 feet to a side, then manually removed mana from it to make a rough oval shape. He placed his make shift surf board on the the edge of the water so that the back was still in the sand and stood atop it. With no buoyancy, it immediately sunk, but he leaned backwards to tilt the nose out of the water. Finally, he cast a force variant of Gust to push himself along and launched off of the beach.
From where he was, it was a straight shot north-west to the next dungeon, once again, in the middle of the sea. Felix wasn't looking forward to diving down and searching again but he figured he had no other choice to find the stupid thing. He had a few hours of relative inactivity just trying to remain upright so he pulled out the D tier cube and funneled ambient mana. It was much faster when he was moving as well because he didn't completely deplete his surroundings.
The sea was rougher than yesterday, making surfing, especially on a crude board with a kook surfer, much harder. Felix had to right himself on the board with spells multiple times throughout the journey which, every time, slowed down how quickly he could funnel ambient mana into the cube. He hoped it was almost complete as it was taking an astronomical amount of mana to open.
Note to self, don't dump mana out of anything until you are very sure what you are doing or, you have a place to store it all temporarily.
Felix was getting close to the dungeon, about a kilometer away judging from his map.
[D - Epic] Skill Test Cube: Mana Control
Congratulations!
You have completed a Skill Test Cube: Mana Control
Would you like to open the cube?
Yes.
No.
The screen appearing in front of his face caused Felix to miss a wave that caught the nose of his board and sent him face first into the sea.
Fucking hell. No.
Felix righted himself and surfaced coughing up sea water from his throat. He spotted the cube he had accidentally thrown and swam over to retrieve it.
I can't open this while treading water, what if it's a book or powder or something. Ugh, I guess I find the dungeon, complete that then I can worry about the cube later. . . . . .